- Teacher: Erin Milez
- Class Length: 6.5 hours (includes half hour break)
Emphasis
What makes a painting hold attention?
Emphasis is how you take control of the viewer’s experience—guiding the eye, creating impact, and shaping emotion. In this class, you’ll use distortion, scale shifts, and playful exaggeration to decide what matters most in your image—and make sure it gets seen.
Without emphasis, even a well-painted figure can fall flat. The viewer doesn’t know where to look. The story gets lost. The painting becomes forgettable.
You’ll work from a live model, using quick studies and longer paintings to explore how emphasis creates clarity, focus, and narrative weight. We’ll strip color to focus on form, letting shape, proportion, and movement do the heavy lifting.
By the end, you’ll have a new approach to composition—one that puts you in charge of how your painting speaks.
Prerequisites: Figure Drawing, Beginning Painting
Sign up for individual classes, or take the full series at 15% off. Use the coupon code FIGURESTORY15
Supplies:
- Basic drawing supplies for sketching (your choice)
- Acrylic or oil paint (your choice)
- Medium/ large pad of paper for sketching
- One painting surfaces, primed paper or canvas (9×12″ to 18×24″)
