_______________ Refers to Objects Such as Paintings or Drawings

1. Line

There are many different types of lines, all characterized by their length being greater than their width. Lines tin can be static or dynamic depending on how the artist chooses to use them. They help make up one's mind the move, direction and energy in a work of art. We see line all around us in our daily lives; telephone wires, tree branches, jet contrails and winding roads are just a few examples. Wait at the photograph below to see how line is function of natural and synthetic environments.

In this image of a lightning tempest nosotros can see many different lines. Certainly the jagged, meandering lines of the lightning itself dominate the epitome, followed by the directly lines of the skyline structures and the coast line. In that location are more subtle lines too, like the lights forth the buildings.  Lines are fifty-fifty implied past the reflections in the h2o.

The Nazca lines in the arid coastal plains of Peru engagement to nearly 500 BCE were scratched into the rocky soil, depicting animals on an incredible scale, so large that they are all-time viewed from the air. Allow's wait at how the different kinds of line are fabricated.

Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas from 1656, ostensibly a portrait of the Infanta Margarita, the daughter of Rex Philip Four and Queen Mariana of Spain, offers a sumptuous amount of artistic genius; its sheer size (nigh ten feet foursquare), painterly way of naturalism, lighting effects, and the enigmatic figures placed throughout the canvass–including the artist himself –is ane of the great paintings in western art history. Let'due south examine information technology (below) to uncover how Velazquez uses basic elements and principles of art to achieve such a masterpiece.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, 125.2" 10 108.7". Prado, Madrid. CC BY-SA

Actual lines are those that are physically present. The edge of the wooden stretcher bar at the left of Las Meninas is an actual line, as are the picture frames in the groundwork and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures' dresses. How many other actual lines can you find in the painting?

Implied lines are those created by visually connecting two or more areas together. The gaze to the Infanta Margarita—the blonde central figure in the composition—from the meninas, or maids of honour, to the left and right of her, are implied lines. They visually connect the figures. Past visually connecting the space betwixt the heads of all the figures in the painting nosotros have a sense of jagged implied line that keeps the lower part of the composition in motility, balanced against the darker, more static upper areas of the painting. Implied lines tin as well be created when two areas of different colors or tones come together. Tin you identify more unsaid lines in the painting? Where? Implied lines are constitute in three-dimensional artworks, besides. The sculpture of the Laocoon below, a figure from Greek and Roman mythology, is, along with his sons, beingness strangled past ocean snakes sent past the goddess Athena every bit wrath confronting his warnings to the Trojans non to have the Trojan equus caballus. The sculpture sets implied lines in move equally the figures writhe in agony against the snakes.

Laocoon Grouping, Roman copy of Greek original, Vatican Museum, Rome. Photograph past Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC BY-SA

Straight or classic lines provide structure to a composition. They can be oriented to the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal axis of a surface. Directly lines are past nature visually stable, while even so giving direction to a composition. InLas Meninas, you tin meet them in the canvas supports on the left, the wall supports and doorways on the right, and in the background in matrices on the wall spaces between the framed pictures. Moreover, the modest horizontal lines created in the stair edges in the groundwork assistance anchor the unabridged visual design of the painting. Vertical and horizontal direct lines provide the most stable compositions. Diagonal directly lines are usually more visually dynamic, unstable, and tension-filled.

Straight lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Expressive lines are curved, adding an organic, more dynamic graphic symbol to a work of art. Expressive lines are often rounded and follow undetermined paths. In Las Meninas you can see them in the aprons on the girls' dresses and in the dog's folded hind leg and glaze design. Wait again at the Laocoon to see expressive lines in the figures' flailing limbs and the sinuous course of the snakes. Indeed, the sculpture seems to be made up of nothing only expressive lines, shapes and forms.

Organic lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

At that place are other kinds of line that comprehend the characteristics of those above yet, taken together, assistance create additional creative elements and richer, more than varied compositions. Refer to the images and examples beneath to become familiar with these types of line.

Outline, or profile line is the simplest of these. They create a path around the edge of a shape. In fact, outlines frequently define shapes.

Outline, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Hatch lines are repeated at short intervals in generally i direction. They give shading and visual texture to the surface of an object.

Hatch, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Crosshatch lines provide additional tone and texture. They tin can be oriented in any direction. Multiple layers of crosshatch lines can give rich and varied shading to objects past manipulating the pressure of the cartoon tool to create a big range of values.

Crosshatch, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Line quality is that sense of graphic symbol embedded in the fashion a line presents itself. Sure lines have qualities that distinguish them from others. Hard-edged, jagged lines take a staccato visual movement while organic, flowing lines create a more comfortable feeling. Meandering lines can exist either geometric or expressive, and you can see in the examples how their indeterminate paths breathing a surface to different degrees.

Lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Although line every bit a visual chemical element generally plays a supporting role in visual art, there are wonderful examples in which line carries a strong cultural significance as the main subject matter.

Calligraphic lines utilize quickness and gesture, more than akin to paint strokes, to imbue an artwork with a fluid, lyrical graphic symbol. To see this unique line quality, look up the piece of work of Chinese poet and creative person Dong Qichang, dating from the Ming dynasty (1555-1637). A more geometric case from the Koran, created in the Standard arabic calligraphic style, dates from the ix^th century.

Both these examples show how artists use line equally both a form of writing and a visual art form. American artist Mark Tobey (1890–1976) was influenced by Oriental calligraphy, adapting its form to the human activity of pure painting within a modern abstract manner described as white writing.

2. Shape

A shape is defined every bit an enclosed expanse in 2 dimensions. By definition shapes are e'er apartment, simply the combination of shapes, colour, and other means can make shapes appear three-dimensional, as forms. Shapes can be created in many ways, the simplest by enclosing an area with an outline. They can besides be made past surrounding an area with other shapes or the placement of different textures next to each other—for example, the shape of an island surrounded past water. Because they are more complex than lines, shapes are normally more than important in the arrangement of compositions. The examples beneath give us an idea of how shapes are made.

Geometric Shapes, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

Referring back to Velazquez's Las Meninas, it is fundamentally an arrangement of shapes; organic and hard-edged, light, night and mid-toned, that solidifies the composition inside the larger shape of the canvas. Looking at it this way, nosotros can view whatsoever work of art, whether ii or three-dimensional, realistic, abstract or non-objective, in terms of shapes alone.

Geometric Shapes vs. Organic Shapes

Shapes can exist further categorized into geometric and organic. Examples of geometric shapes are the ones we can recognize and name: squares, triangles, circles, hexagons, etc. Organic shapes are those that are based on organic or living things or are more than free grade: the shape of a tree, confront, monkey, cloud, etc.

3. Form

Class is sometimes used to describe a shape that has an implied third dimension. In other words, an artist may endeavor to brand parts of a flat epitome appear three-dimensional. Notice in the drawing below how the artist makes the different shapes appear iii-dimensional through the utilise of shading. Information technology's a flat image but appears iii-dimensional.

This image is free of copyright restrictions.

When an image is incredibly realistic in terms of its forms (as well as color, space, etc.) such equally this painting by Edwaert Collier, we call that trompe l'oeil, French for "fool the eye."

Edweart Collier, Trompe l'oeil with Writing Materials,
oil on canvass, c. 1702.
This prototype is in the public domain.

4. Space

Space is the empty area surrounding or between real or implied objects. Humans categorize infinite: in that location is outer infinite, that limitless void we enter across our heaven; inner space, which resides in people'southward minds and imaginations, and personal space, the important but intangible area that surrounds each individual and which is violated if someone else gets too close. Pictorial space is flat, and the digital realm resides in net. Fine art responds to all of these kinds of space.

Many artists are every bit concerned with space in their works as they are with, say, color or form. There are many ways for the creative person to present ideas of space. Remember that many cultures traditionally use pictorial space every bit a window to view realistic subject affair through, and through the discipline matter they present ideas, narratives and symbolic content. The innovation of linear perspective, an unsaid geometric pictorial construct dating from fifteenth-century Europe, affords us the accurate illusion of 3-dimensional infinite on a apartment surface, and appears to recede into the altitude through the use of a horizon line and vanishing point(south) . You can see how one-signal linear perspective is set up in the examples below:

Ane-Point Linear Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

One-bespeak perspective occurs when the receding lines appear to converge at a single point on the horizon and used when the flat forepart of an object is facing the viewer. Note: Perspective tin can exist used to evidence the relative size and recession into space of any object, but is most effective with difficult-edged 3-dimensional objects such as buildings.

A classic Renaissance artwork using one signal perspective is Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper from 1498. Da Vinci composes the work by locating the vanishing point direct behind the head of Christ, thus drawing the viewer's attending to the center. His arms mirror the receding wall lines, and, if we follow them equally lines, would converge at the same vanishing point.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1498. Fresco. Santa Maria della Grazie. Piece of work is in the public domain.

2-indicate perspective occurs when the vertical edge of a cube is facing the viewer, exposing 2 sides that recede into the altitude, one to each vanishing betoken.

Two-Point Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

View Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Weather from 1877 to see how 2-bespeak perspective is used to give an authentic view to an urban scene.  The creative person's composition, however, is more complex than just his utilise of perspective. The figures are deliberately placed to directly the viewer'due south eye from the forepart correct of the picture to the building's front border on the left, which, like a ship's bow, acts as a cleaver to plunge both sides toward the horizon. In the midst of this visual recession a lamp post stands firmly in the eye to arrest our gaze from going right out the back of the painting. Caillebotte includes the footling metal arm at the top correct of the mail service to directly us again along a horizontal path, at present keeping united states of america from traveling off the top of the canvas. As relatively spare as the left side of the work is, the artist crams the right side with hard-edged and organic shapes and forms in a complex play of positive and negative space.

The perspective organisation is a cultural convention well suited to a traditional western European idea of the "truth," that is, an authentic, clear rendition of observed reality. Even later the invention of linear perspective, many cultures traditionally use a flatter pictorial infinite, relying on overlapping, size differences, or vertical placementof components in a two-dimensional piece of work of art. Examine the miniature painting of the Third Court of the Topkapi Palacefrom fourteenth-century Turkey to dissimilarity its pictorial space with that of linear perspective. Information technology'southward composed from a number of dissimilar vantage points (equally opposed to vanishing points), all very flat to the picture aeroplane. While the overall paradigm is seen from above, the figures and trees appear as cutouts, seeming to float in mid air. Observe the towers on the far left and correct are sideways to the flick plane. The copse and people occupying the upper parts of the epitome are meant to exist perceived as farther from the viewer as compared to those trees, buildings and people located near the bottom of the painting. This is an example of vertical placement.

Equally "wrong" as it looks, the painting does requite a detailed clarification of the landscape and structures on the palace grounds.

Third Courtroom of the Topkapi Palace, from the Hunername, 1548. Ottoman miniature painting, Topkapi Museum, Istanbul. CC BY-SA

After nearly v hundred years using linear perspective, western ideas nigh how space is depicted accurately in two dimensions went through a revolution at the beginning of the xx^thursday century. A young Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, moved to Paris, and so western civilisation's capital of art, and largely reinvented pictorial space with the invention of Cubism, ushered in dramatically by his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. He was influenced in role by the chiseled forms, athwart surfaces and asymmetry of African sculpture (refer back to the Male person Effigyfrom Cameroon) and mask-like faces of early on Iberian artworks. For more than data near this important painting, listen to the following question and answer.

In the early 20th century, Picasso, his friend Georges Braque and a scattering of other artists struggled to develop a new infinite that relied on, ironically, the flatness of the picture plane to carry and animate traditional subject matter including figures, still life and landscape. Cubist pictures, and eventually sculptures, became amalgams of different points of view, light sources and planar constructs. It was as if they were presenting their subject matter in many means at once, all the while shifting foreground, middle ground and background so the viewer is not sure where 1 starts and the other ends. In an interview, the artist explained cubism this way: "The problem is now to pass, to get effectually the object, and give a plastic expression to the event. All of this is my struggle to suspension with the two-dimensional aspect*"(from Alexander Liberman, An Artist in His Studio, 1960, page 113). Public and critical reaction to cubism was understandably negative, only the artists' experiments with spatial relationships reverberated with others and became – along with new means of using color – a driving forcefulness in the evolution of a mod art motility that based itself on the flatness of the film aeroplane. Instead of a window to wait into, the flat surface becomes a footing on which to construct formal arrangements of shapes, colors and compositions. For some other perspective on this idea, refer back to module one's word of 'abstraction'.

You lot tin can see the radical changes cubism made in George Braque'southward landscape La Roche Guyonfrom 1909. The trees, houses, castle and surrounding rocks comprise near a single complex form, stair-stepping up the canvas to mimic the distant hill at the acme, all of it struggling up and leaning to the correct within a shallow pictorial space.

George Braque, Castle at La Roche Guyon, 1909. Oil on canvas. Stedelijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Licensed through GNU and Creative Commons

As the cubist style developed, its forms became even flatter. Juan Gris's The Sunblindfrom 1914 splays the notwithstanding life it represents across the canvas.  Collage elements like newspaper reinforce pictorial flatness.

Juan Gris, The Sunblind, 1914. Gouache, collage, chalk, and charcoal on canvas. Tate Gallery, London. Prototype licensed under GNU Free Documentation License

It's non so difficult to sympathise the importance of this new idea of space when placed in the context of comparable advances in science surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century. The Wright Brothers took to the air with powered flight in 1903, the same year Marie Curie won the first of ii Nobel prizes for her pioneering piece of work in radiations. Sigmund Freud'south new ideas on the inner spaces of the mind and its effect on beliefs were published in 1902, and Albert Einstein'south calculations on relativity, the idea that space and time are intertwined, showtime appeared in 1905. Each of these discoveries added to homo understanding and realligned the fashion we look at ourselves and our world. Indeed, Picasso, speaking of his struggle to ascertain cubism, said "Even Einstein did not know it either! The condition of discovery is outside ourselves; but the terrifying affair is that despite all this, we can but find what we know" (from Picasso on Fine art, A Selection of Views past Dore Ashton, (Souchere, 1960, page 15).

Three-dimensional space doesn't undergo this central transformation. It remains a visual and actual relationship between positive and negative spaces.

5. Value and Dissimilarity

Value (or tone) is the relative lightness or darkness of a shape in relation to another. The value scale, bounded on i end past pure white and on the other past blackness, and in between a series of progressively darker shades of grey, gives an artist the tools to make these transformations. The value scale beneath shows the standard variations in tones. Values nigh the lighter end of the spectrum are termed high-keyed, those on the darker finish are low-keyed.

Value Calibration, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC BY

In ii dimensions, the apply of value gives a shape the illusion of form or mass and lends an entire limerick a sense of light and shadow. The ii examples below show the effect value has on irresolute a shape to a form.

2D Grade, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC Past

3D Course, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC BY

This aforementioned technique brings to life what begins every bit a unproblematic line drawing of a swain's head in Michelangelo's Head of a Youth and a Right Mitt from 1508. Shading is created with line (refer to our discussion of line earlier in this module) or tones created with a pencil. Artists vary the tones by the amount of resistance they employ betwixt the pencil and the paper they're drawing on. A drawing pencil'south leads vary in hardness, each ane giving a different tone than another. Washes of ink or color create values adamant past the amount of water the medium is dissolved into.

The utilize of high contrast, placing lighter areas of value confronting much darker ones, creates a dramatic effect, while low contrast gives more than subtle results. These differences in effect are evident in 'Guiditta and Oloferne' by the Italian painter Caravaggio, and Robert Adams' photo Untitled, Denver from 1970-74. Caravaggio uses a high contrast palette to an already dramatic scene to increase the visual tension for the viewer, while Adams deliberately makes apply of depression dissimilarity to underscore the drabness of the landscape surrounding the effigy on the bike.

Caravaggio, Guiditta Decapitates Oloferne, 1598, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Italian Fine art, Rome. This work is in the public domain

6. Color

Color is the almost complex artistic element because of the combinations and variations inherent in its use.  Humans respond to color combinations differently, and artists study and use color in part to give desired direction to their work.

Color is fundamental to many forms of art. Its relevance, utilize and part in a given piece of work depend on the medium of that work. While some concepts dealing with color are broadly applicable across media, others are not.

The full spectrum of colors is contained in white light. Humans perceive colors from the calorie-free reflected off objects. A red object, for example, looks red because it reflects the scarlet part of the spectrum. It would be a different colour under a different light. Color theory get-go appeared in the 17^th century when English language mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white calorie-free could be divided into a spectrum past passing it through a prism.

The study of colour in art and design often starts with colour theory. Color theory splits up colors into 3 categories: chief, secondary, and tertiary.

The basic tool used is a color bicycle, developed past Isaac Newton in 1666. A more complex model known equally the color tree, created by Albert Munsell, shows the spectrum made up of sets of tints and shades on continued planes.

In that location are a number of approaches to organizing colors into meaningful relationships. Most systems differ in structure only.

Traditional Model

Traditional color theory is a qualitative try to organize colors and their relationships. Information technology is based on Newton'due south color wheel, and continues to be the most common organisation used by artists.

Blueish Yellowish Cherry-red Color Wheel. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

Traditional color theory uses the same principles every bit subtractive colour mixing (encounter below) but prefers different chief colors.

• The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. You find them equidistant from each other on the color wheel. These are the "elemental" colors; not produced by mixing any other colors, and all other colors are derived from some combination of these iii.
• The secondary colors are orange (mix of scarlet and yellowish), dark-green (mix of blueish and yellow), and violet (mix of bluish and ruby).
• The third colors are obtained by mixing i primary color and one secondary colour. Depending on amount of color used, unlike hues tin be obtained such as reddish-orange or yellow-green. Neutral colors (browns and grays) can exist mixed using the three primary colors together.
• White and blackness lie outside of these categories. They are used to lighten or darken a color. A lighter colour (made by adding white to it) is called a tint , while a darker color (made by adding black) is called a shade .

Color Mixing

Recall about color as the effect of lite reflecting off a surface. Understood in this way, color tin can be represented every bit a ratio of amounts of primary color mixed together. Color is produced when parts of the external calorie-free source'south spectrum are absorbed past the textile and not reflected dorsum to the viewer'south heart. For example, a painter brushes blueish paint onto a canvas. The chemic composition of the pigment allows all of the colors in the spectrum to be captivated except blue, which is reflected from the paint'south surface.  Common applications of subtractive color theory are used in the visual arts, color printing and processing photographic positives and negatives.

• The master colors are red, xanthous, and blue.
• The secondary colors are orange, greenish and violet.
• The tertiary colors are created past mixing a primary with a secondary color.
• Black is mixed using the three chief colors, while white represents the absenteeism of all colors. Note: considering of impurities in subtractive color, a true black is impossible to create through the mixture of primaries. Because of this the issue is closer to brown. Similar to additive color theory, lightness and darkness of a color is determined by its intensity and density.

Subtractive Colour Mixing. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

Color Attributes

There are many attributes to color. Each 1 has an effect on how we perceive it.

• Hue refers to colour itself, but also to the variations of a color.
• Value (equally discussed previously) refers to the relative lightness or darkness of one color side by side to another. The value of a color tin can brand a departure in how it is perceived. A colour on a night background volition appear lighter, while that same colour on a light background will appear darker.
• Saturation refers to the purity and intensity of a color. The primaries are the nigh intense and pure, but diminish equally they are mixed to form other colors. The creation of tints and shades also diminish a color'southward saturation. Two colors work strongest together when they share the same intensity.

Color Interactions

Beyond creating a mixing hierarchy, color theory also provides tools for understanding how colors work together.

Monochrome

The simplest color interaction is monochrome. This is the use of variations of a single hue. The advantage of using a monochromatic color scheme is that you become a high level of unity throughout the artwork because all the tones chronicle to ane another. See this in Marking Tansey's Derrida Queries de Man from 1990.

Analogous Color

Coordinating colors are similar to one another. As their name implies, coordinating colors can exist found next to 1 some other on any 12-part colour wheel:

Coordinating Color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Y'all can run across the effect of analogous colors in Paul Cezanne'southward oil painting Auvers Panoromic View

Colour Temperature

Colors are perceived to have temperatures associated with them. The color bike is divided into warm and cool colors. Warm colors range from yellow to cerise, while cool colors range from yellowish-dark-green to violet.  You lot can achieve complex results using merely a few colors when you pair them in warm and absurd sets.

Warm cool color, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are constitute direct opposite ane some other on a colour cycle. Here are some examples:

• purple and yellowish
• light-green and crimson
• orange and bluish

Complementary Color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Blueish and orange are complements. When placed well-nigh each other, complements create a visual tension. This color scheme is desirable when a dramatic event is needed using only two colors.

vii. Texture

At the most basic level, Three-dimensional works of fine art (sculpture, pottery, textiles, metalwork, etc.) and architecture take actual texture which is often adamant by the material that was used to create it: woods, stone, bronze, clay, etc. Ii-dimensional works of fine art like paintings, drawings, and prints may try to prove implied texture through the use of lines, colors, or other ways. When a painting has a lot of actual texture from the application of thick paint, we call that impasto.

The first image below is a sculpture, and like all three-dimensional objects it has actual texture.

The next two images are details from the painting The Arnolfini Portrait by January van Eyck. Hither, the artist has created implied texture. If you were to affect this painting you would not feel the fabric of the clothing and carpet, the wooden floor or the smooth metal of the chandelier, but our optics "run across" the texture.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-sac-artappreciation/chapter/oer-1-9/

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