The Value of Emphasis
In designing, the use of emphasis is very important; and it may be said that drawing or designing without emphasis is like reading without stops, while awkward emphasis is like putting your stops in the wrong place.
By a difference in emphasis the same design may be given quite a different effect and expression.
Suppose, for instance, we were designing a vertical pattern of stem, leaves, and fruit in one colour. By throwing the emphasis upon the leaves, as in No. 1, we should gain one kind of effect or decorative expression. By throwing the emphasis upon the fruit, and leaving the leaves in outline, we should get quite a different effect out of the same elements, as in No. 2. While by leaving stem, leaves, and fruit all in outline, and throwing the emphasis upon the ground, we should get, again, a totally distinct kind of effect and expression.
Similar differences of effect and expression, owing to differences of emphasis, might be studied in the drawing and treatment of a head (as in a, b, and c). The possibilities of such variations of emphasis in drawing are practically unlimited and co-extensive with the variations of expression we see in nature herself. The pictorial artist is free to translate or represent them in his work, controlled solely by the conditions and purpose of his work.
It is these conditions and purposes which really control both choice and treatment, and determine the emphasis, and therefore the expression of the work.