Everyone knows how to point and click to take a photo. But an artist thinks about how the major shapes work together to create a powerful sense of scale, emphasize one's most beautiful features, or avoid awkward compositions. 

Everyone loves Vincent Van Gough's "Starry Night," but how many of us understand why? Was it his unique painting style? He painted every painting with that style, but only Starry Night became so famous. This painting is a masterpiece in terms of layout and composition. And once you know these secrets, like most professional graphic designers and photographers do, then you too can easily adapt these 9 principles to improve your own art, sometimes by simply changing the angle or rearranging your subject just before taking a shot. 

By learning to use the principles of Balance, Contrast, Emphasis, Movement, Rhythm, Harmony, Framing, and the use of Negative Space in your own unique way, you can create an emotionally provocative piece of art in your own recognizable style that will leave your audience emotionally overwhelmed. They may not even understand what it is that makes it so they can't look away, but once you know these principles it becomes easy to direct their eyes. Magicians, game designers, film makers, and graphic designers all use these techniques to subconsciously direct the audience's eyes and keep their attention. 

As a professional animator, game art illustrator, educational game designer, and graphic designer I have been using and teaching young artists to use these principles for 8 years. You won't find a more effective way of conveying the importance of these technique. What your child will learn in this 50 minutes will shape the way they see the world and help them to analyze both their own art and the art of others for the rest of their lives. I taught high school Graphic Design classes and Photography for 8 years, and this is the most important lesson I taught every student. 

This class will be live and interactive. I will show examples of every principle from the masters exposing your student to some art history, and students will learn to discuss art at a high level each step of the lesson. Every time I teach this lesson, students are profoundly moved, and walk away seeing the world through new eyes. I can't tell you how many times students have come back to me and told me, "Oh my God, now I see the principles of design every where I look!"