Includes Style Technique and Material When Discussing a Work of Art
1. Line
There are many different types of lines, all characterized by their length being greater than their width. Lines tin be static or dynamic depending on how the artist chooses to apply them. They aid determine the motion, direction and energy in a work of art. We see line all around u.s.a. in our daily lives; phone wires, tree branches, jet contrails and winding roads are simply a few examples. Expect at the photograph below to see how line is part of natural and constructed environments.
In this prototype of a lightning storm we tin encounter many different lines. Certainly the jagged, meandering lines of the lightning itself dominate the epitome, followed by the straight lines of the skyline structures and the coast line. There are more subtle lines too, like the lights along the buildings. Lines are fifty-fifty implied by the reflections in the water.
The Nazca lines in the arid coastal plains of Peru date to nearly 500 BCE were scratched into the rocky soil, depicting animals on an incredible calibration, so large that they are all-time viewed from the air. Let'due south await 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 Iv and Queen Mariana of Spain, offers a sumptuous corporeality of artistic genius; its sheer size (nigh ten anxiety square), painterly manner of naturalism, lighting effects, and the enigmatic figures placed throughout the canvass–including the artist himself –is 1 of the groovy paintings in western fine art history. Permit's examine it (below) to uncover how Velazquez uses basic elements and principles of art to reach such a masterpiece.
Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, 125.ii" 10 108.7". Prado, Madrid. CC BY-SA
Actual lines are those that are physically present. The border of the wooden stretcher bar at the left of Las Meninas is an actual line, as are the motion picture frames in the background and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures' dresses. How many other actual lines can you observe in the painting?
Implied lines are those created past visually connecting two or more than areas together. The gaze to the Infanta Margarita—the blonde central figure in the limerick—from the meninas, or maids of honor, to the left and correct of her, are implied lines. They visually connect the figures. By visually connecting the space between the heads of all the figures in the painting nosotros have a sense of jagged unsaid line that keeps the lower part of the composition in motion, balanced against the darker, more static upper areas of the painting. Implied lines can also be created when 2 areas of unlike colors or tones come together. Can yous identify more implied lines in the painting? Where? Implied lines are found in iii-dimensional artworks, besides. The sculpture of the Laocoon below, a figure from Greek and Roman mythology, is, along with his sons, existence strangled by sea snakes sent by the goddess Athena as wrath against his warnings to the Trojans not to accept the Trojan horse. The sculpture sets unsaid lines in motion equally the figures writhe in desperation against the snakes.
Laocoon Group, Roman re-create of Greek original, Vatican Museum, Rome. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC BY-SA
Straight or classic lines provide structure to a composition. They tin can be oriented to the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal axis of a surface. Straight lines are by nature visually stable, while all the same giving direction to a composition. InLas Meninas, you tin run into them in the canvas supports on the left, the wall supports and doorways on the right, and in the groundwork in matrices on the wall spaces betwixt the framed pictures. Moreover, the modest horizontal lines created in the stair edges in the background assistance anchor the unabridged visual design of the painting. Vertical and horizontal straight lines provide the well-nigh stable compositions. Diagonal directly lines are ordinarily more visually dynamic, unstable, and tension-filled.
Direct lines, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY
Expressive lines are curved, adding an organic, more than dynamic grapheme to a piece of work of art. Expressive lines are oft rounded and follow undetermined paths. In Las Meninas you can see them in the aprons on the girls' dresses and in the domestic dog's folded hind leg and coat pattern. Look over again at the Laocoon to come across expressive lines in the figures' flailing limbs and the sinuous form of the snakes. Indeed, the sculpture seems to exist made upward of aught but expressive lines, shapes and forms.
Organic lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past
There are other kinds of line that comprehend the characteristics of those to a higher place yet, taken together, help create additional artistic elements and richer, more varied compositions. Refer to the images and examples below to become familiar with these types of line.
Outline, or contour line is the simplest of these. They create a path around the border of a shape. In fact, outlines often define shapes.
Outline, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By
Hatch lines are repeated at brusk intervals in more often than not 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 whatever management. Multiple layers of crosshatch lines tin give rich and varied shading to objects by manipulating the pressure of the drawing tool to create a large range of values.
Crosshatch, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY
Line quality is that sense of character embedded in the mode a line presents itself. Certain lines accept qualities that distinguish them from others. Hard-edged, jagged lines have a staccato visual movement while organic, flowing lines create a more than comfortable feeling. Meandering lines can be either geometric or expressive, and you can run into in the examples how their indeterminate paths animate a surface to different degrees.
Lines, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY
Although line as a visual element generally plays a supporting part in visual fine art, there are wonderful examples in which line carries a stiff cultural significance every bit the principal subject matter.
Calligraphic lines use quickness and gesture, more alike to paint strokes, to imbue an artwork with a fluid, lyrical grapheme. To see this unique line quality, look upward the work of Chinese poet and artist Dong Qichang, dating from the Ming dynasty (1555-1637). A more geometric example from the Koran, created in the Arabic calligraphic fashion, dates from the 9th century.
Both these examples evidence how artists utilize line equally both a grade of writing and a visual art form. American artist Mark Tobey (1890–1976) was influenced by Oriental calligraphy, adapting its form to the act of pure painting within a modernistic abstruse style described as white writing.
2. Shape
A shape is divers as an enclosed surface area in two dimensions. By definition shapes are always flat, but the combination of shapes, color, and other means can brand shapes appear three-dimensional, as forms. Shapes tin can exist created in many ways, the simplest by enclosing an area with an outline. They can also exist made by surrounding an area with other shapes or the placement of different textures next to each other—for instance, the shape of an island surrounded past water. Considering they are more complex than lines, shapes are usually more than of import in the arrangement of compositions. The examples below give us an idea of how shapes are made.
Geometric Shapes, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past
Referring dorsum to Velazquez's Las Meninas, it is fundamentally an arrangement of shapes; organic and hard-edged, light, dark and mid-toned, that solidifies the limerick inside the larger shape of the sheet. Looking at it this way, we can view any work of fine art, whether two or three-dimensional, realistic, abstract or non-objective, in terms of shapes alone.
Geometric Shapes vs. Organic Shapes
Shapes tin be further categorized into geometric and organic. Examples of geometric shapes are the ones nosotros can recognize and name: squares, triangles, circles, hexagons, etc. Organic shapes are those that are based on organic or living things or are more complimentary form: the shape of a tree, face, monkey, cloud, etc.
3. Form
Class is sometimes used to depict a shape that has an implied tertiary dimension. In other words, an artist may try to make parts of a flat prototype appear 3-dimensional. Notice in the cartoon below how the artist makes the dissimilar shapes announced 3-dimensional through the use of shading. It's a flat image but appears three-dimensional.
This image is free of copyright restrictions.
When an epitome is incredibly realistic in terms of its forms (as well as color, space, etc.) such as this painting past Edwaert Collier, nosotros telephone call that trompe l'oeil, French for "fool the eye."
Edweart Collier, Trompe l'oeil with Writing Materials,
oil on sheet, c. 1702.
This image is in the public domain.
4. Space
Space is the empty surface area surrounding or between real or implied objects. Humans categorize infinite: there is outer space, that limitless void we enter across our heaven; inner infinite, which resides in people'south minds and imaginations, and personal space, the important simply intangible area that surrounds each individual and which is violated if someone else gets too close. Pictorial infinite is flat, and the digital realm resides in internet. Fine art responds to all of these kinds of space.
Many artists are as concerned with space in their works as they are with, say, colour or form. There are many means for the artist to present ideas of space. Remember that many cultures traditionally use pictorial space as a window to view realistic subject matter through, and through the bailiwick thing they nowadays ideas, narratives and symbolic content. The innovation of linear perspective, an implied geometric pictorial construct dating from fifteenth-century Europe, affords us the accurate illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, and appears to recede into the distance through the employ of a horizon line and vanishing point(southward) . You can come across how i-point linear perspective is set up in the examples beneath:
Ane-Point Linear Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past
One-point perspective occurs when the receding lines appear to converge at a single betoken on the horizon and used when the apartment forepart of an object is facing the viewer. Notation: Perspective can be used to show the relative size and recession into space of any object, but is most effective with hard-edged three-dimensional objects such as buildings.
A classic Renaissance artwork using one betoken perspective is Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper from 1498. Da Vinci composes the piece of work past locating the vanishing betoken directly backside the head of Christ, thus cartoon the viewer'southward 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. Work is in the public domain.
Ii-point perspective occurs when the vertical edge of a cube is facing the viewer, exposing two sides that recede into the altitude, i to each vanishing point.
Two-Point Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By
View Gustave Caillebotte'south Paris Street, Rainy Atmospheric condition from 1877 to see how two-point perspective is used to requite an accurate view to an urban scene. The artist'southward composition, however, is more than circuitous than just his use of perspective. The figures are deliberately placed to directly the viewer's eye from the front right of the picture to the edifice's forepart edge 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 heart to abort our gaze from going right out the back of the painting. Caillebotte includes the little metal arm at the top right of the post to direct us again forth a horizontal path, now keeping us from traveling off the pinnacle of the canvas. Every bit relatively spare as the left side of the piece of 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 arrangement is a cultural convention well suited to a traditional western European idea of the "truth," that is, an authentic, articulate rendition of observed reality. Even after the invention of linear perspective, many cultures traditionally use a flatter pictorial space, relying on overlapping, size differences, or vertical placementof components in a 2-dimensional work of art. Examine the miniature painting of the Third Courtroom of the Topkapi Palacefrom fourteenth-century Turkey to contrast its pictorial space with that of linear perspective. It's composed from a number of different vantage points (every bit opposed to vanishing points), all very apartment to the picture aeroplane. While the overall image is seen from above, the figures and trees announced as cutouts, seeming to bladder in mid air. Observe the towers on the far left and correct are sideways to the flick plane. The trees and people occupying the upper parts of the epitome are meant to be perceived as further from the viewer as compared to those trees, buildings and people located most the bottom of the painting. This is an example of vertical placement.
As "incorrect" every bit it looks, the painting does give a detailed clarification of the landscape and structures on the palace grounds.
Third Court of the Topkapi Palace, from the Hunername, 1548. Ottoman miniature painting, Topkapi Museum, Istanbul. CC By-SA
After nearly 5 hundred years using linear perspective, western ideas about how space is depicted accurately in two dimensions went through a revolution at the beginning of the twentyth century. A young Spanish creative person, Pablo Picasso, moved to Paris, then western culture'southward majuscule 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 office by the chiseled forms, angular surfaces and disproportion of African sculpture (refer back to the Male Figurefrom Cameroon) and mask-like faces of early Iberian artworks. For more than information about this of import painting, listen to the following question and reply.
In the early 20th century, Picasso, his friend Georges Braque and a handful of other artists struggled to develop a new space that relied on, ironically, the flatness of the motion picture plane to behave and animate traditional subject matter including figures, nevertheless life and mural. Cubist pictures, and eventually sculptures, became amalgams of different points of view, light sources and planar constructs. Information technology was as if they were presenting their subject matter in many ways at once, all the while shifting foreground, middle ground and background so the viewer is non sure where 1 starts and the other ends. In an interview, the artist explained cubism this style: "The trouble is at present to pass, to go around the object, and give a plastic expression to the event. All of this is my struggle to break with the ii-dimensional attribute*"(from Alexander Liberman, An Artist in His Studio, 1960, page 113). Public and disquisitional reaction to cubism was understandably negative, only the artists' experiments with spatial relationships reverberated with others and became – along with new ways of using color – a driving force in the development of a modern fine art move that based itself on the flatness of the flick plane. Instead of a window to look into, the apartment surface becomes a ground on which to construct formal arrangements of shapes, colors and compositions. For another perspective on this idea, refer dorsum to module one's discussion of 'abstraction'.
You tin can run across the radical changes cubism made in George Braque's mural La Roche Guyonfrom 1909. The trees, houses, castle and surrounding rocks comprise almost a single complex form, stair-stepping up the canvas to mimic the afar colina at the top, all of it struggling upwards and leaning to the right within a shallow pictorial space.
George Braque, Castle at La Roche Guyon, 1909. Oil on sheet. Stedelijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Licensed through GNU and Creative Commons
Equally the cubist style developed, its forms became even flatter. Juan Gris's The Sunblindfrom 1914 splays the still life it represents across the sail. Collage elements like newspaper reinforce pictorial flatness.
Juan Gris, The Sunblind, 1914. Gouache, collage, chalk, and charcoal on canvas. Tate Gallery, London. Image licensed under GNU Gratuitous Documentation License
It's not then difficult to understand the importance of this new idea of infinite 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 aforementioned yr Marie Curie won the first of 2 Nobel prizes for her pioneering piece of work in radiations. Sigmund Freud's new ideas on the inner spaces of the heed and its effect on behavior were published in 1902, and Albert Einstein's calculations on relativity, the thought that space and time are intertwined, first appeared in 1905. Each of these discoveries added to human being understanding and realligned the way we look at ourselves and our world. Indeed, Picasso, speaking of his struggle to define cubism, said "Even Einstein did not know it either! The condition of discovery is outside ourselves; merely the terrifying thing is that despite all this, we tin can only notice what nosotros know" (from Picasso on Art, A Option of Views by Dore Ashton, (Souchere, 1960, page fifteen).
Three-dimensional infinite doesn't undergo this fundamental transformation. It remains a visual and actual relationship betwixt 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 ane end by pure white and on the other by black, and in between a series of progressively darker shades of grey, gives an artist the tools to brand these transformations. The value scale below shows the standard variations in tones. Values about the lighter terminate of the spectrum are termed high-keyed, those on the darker end are depression-keyed.
Value Scale, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC Past
In 2 dimensions, the use of value gives a shape the illusion of form or mass and lends an entire composition a sense of light and shadow. The two examples beneath testify the effect value has on changing a shape to a class.
| 2D Form, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC BY | 3D Form, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC By |
This aforementioned technique brings to life what begins as a elementary line cartoon of a swain's caput in Michelangelo'due south Head of a Youth and a Correct 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 past the amount of resistance they apply between the pencil and the paper they're drawing on. A drawing pencil's leads vary in hardness, each one giving a different tone than some other. Washes of ink or color create values determined past the corporeality of h2o the medium is dissolved into.
The utilize of high contrast, placing lighter areas of value against much darker ones, creates a dramatic issue, while depression contrast gives more subtle results. These differences in effect are evident in 'Guiditta and Oloferne' by the Italian painter Caravaggio, and Robert Adams' photograph Untitled, Denver from 1970-74. Caravaggio uses a high dissimilarity palette to an already dramatic scene to increase the visual tension for the viewer, while Adams deliberately makes use of depression contrast to underscore the drabness of the landscape surrounding the figure on the wheel.
Caravaggio, Guiditta Decapitates Oloferne, 1598, oil on sheet. National Gallery of Italian Art, Rome. This work is in the public domain
six. Color
Color is the well-nigh complex artistic element because of the combinations and variations inherent in its use. Humans reply to colour combinations differently, and artists study and use color in part to give desired direction to their work.
Color is fundamental to many forms of fine art. Its relevance, utilize and role in a given work depend on the medium of that work. While some concepts dealing with colour are broadly applicable beyond media, others are not.
The full spectrum of colors is contained in white low-cal. Humans perceive colors from the lite reflected off objects. A crimson object, for example, looks red considering it reflects the scarlet office of the spectrum. It would exist a dissimilar colour under a different light. Color theory first appeared in the 17th century when English mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white calorie-free could be divided into a spectrum by passing it through a prism.
The written report of color in art and design often starts with colour theory. Color theory splits upwardly colors into three categories: primary, secondary, and 3rd.
The basic tool used is a color wheel, adult by Isaac Newton in 1666. A more complex model known as the colour tree, created by Albert Munsell, shows the spectrum made up of sets of tints and shades on connected planes.
At that place are a number of approaches to organizing colors into meaningful relationships. Most systems differ in structure but.
Traditional Model
Traditional color theory is a qualitative endeavour to organize colors and their relationships. It is based on Newton'southward color wheel, and continues to be the nigh mutual system used by artists.
Blue Yellowish Red Color Wheel. Released nether the GNU Free Documentation License
Traditional color theory uses the same principles as subtractive color mixing (see beneath) only prefers different chief colors.
- The principal colors are red, blue, and xanthous. You lot find them equidistant from each other on the color wheel. These are the "elemental" colors; not produced past mixing whatever other colors, and all other colors are derived from some combination of these three.
- The secondary colors are orangish (mix of red and yellow), light-green (mix of blue and yellow), and violet (mix of bluish and crimson).
- The tertiary colors are obtained by mixing one primary color and one secondary color. Depending on amount of color used, dissimilar hues can be obtained such as red-orange or yellow-green. Neutral colors (browns and grays) tin can be mixed using the iii primary colors together.
- White and blackness prevarication exterior 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 colour (made past calculation black) is called a shade .
Color Mixing
Think about color as the effect of light reflecting off a surface. Understood in this style, color can be represented as a ratio of amounts of chief color mixed together. Color is produced when parts of the external light source's spectrum are absorbed by the material and not reflected dorsum to the viewer'southward eye. For case, a painter brushes blue pigment onto a canvas. The chemical limerick of the paint allows all of the colors in the spectrum to be captivated except blue, which is reflected from the paint's surface. Common applications of subtractive color theory are used in the visual arts, color press and processing photographic positives and negatives.
- The chief colors are red, yellow, and blue.
- The secondary colors are orange, green and violet.
- The tertiary colors are created by mixing a master with a secondary colour.
- Black is mixed using the three principal colors, while white represents the absenteeism of all colors. Note: because of impurities in subtractive color, a true black is impossible to create through the mixture of primaries. Because of this the result is closer to brown. Similar to additive color theory, lightness and darkness of a colour is determined past its intensity and density.
Subtractive Color Mixing. Released under the GNU Costless Documentation License
Color Attributes
In that location are many attributes to colour. Each 1 has an consequence on how we perceive it.
- Hue refers to color itself, but likewise to the variations of a color.
- Value (every bit discussed previously) refers to the relative lightness or darkness of one colour next to another. The value of a colour can brand a difference in how it is perceived. A color on a dark groundwork volition announced lighter, while that same colour on a light groundwork will appear darker.
- Saturation refers to the purity and intensity of a color. The primaries are the most intense and pure, but diminish equally they are mixed to class other colors. The cosmos of tints and shades also diminish a color's saturation. 2 colors piece of work strongest together when they share the same intensity.
Color Interactions
Beyond creating a mixing bureaucracy, color theory besides provides tools for understanding how colors work together.
Monochrome
The simplest colour interaction is monochrome. This is the use of variations of a single hue. The advantage of using a monochromatic color scheme is that you get a high level of unity throughout the artwork considering all the tones relate to ane another. Run into this in Mark Tansey'due south Derrida Queries de Man from 1990.
Analogous Colour
Coordinating colors are similar to one another. Equally their proper noun implies, analogous colors tin can be found next to one another on any 12-part color wheel:
Analogous Color, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past
You can see the effect of analogous colors in Paul Cezanne's oil painting Auvers Panoromic View
Color Temperature
Colors are perceived to have temperatures associated with them. The colour wheel is divided into warm and absurd colors. Warm colors range from yellow to red, while absurd colors range from yellowish-green to violet. You can achieve complex results using but a few colors when you pair them in warm and cool sets.
Warm cool color, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By
Complementary Colors
Complementary colors are institute directly opposite one another on a colour wheel. Hither are some examples:
- purple and yellow
- green and cerise
- orange and blueish
Complementary Color, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY
Blue and orangish are complements. When placed almost each other, complements create a visual tension. This color scheme is desirable when a dramatic effect is needed using but two colors.
7. Texture
At the most basic level, Three-dimensional works of art (sculpture, pottery, textiles, metalwork, etc.) and compages take actual texture which is often determined by the material that was used to create information technology: wood, stone, statuary, clay, etc. Two-dimensional works of art similar paintings, drawings, and prints may try to show unsaid texture through the use of lines, colors, or other means. When a painting has a lot of actual texture from the awarding of thick paint, we telephone call that impasto.
The commencement image below is a sculpture, and similar all three-dimensional objects information technology has actual texture.
The next two images are details from the painting The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck. Here, the artist has created implied texture. If yous were to impact this painting you would not feel the cloth of the habiliment and carpet, the wooden flooring or the shine metallic of the chandelier, just our eyes "run into" the texture.
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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-sac-artappreciation/chapter/oer-1-9/