The Elements and Principles of Art

The building blocks or ingredients of art. The Elements of Art The building blocks or ingredients of art.

LINE A mark with length and direction. A continuous mark made on a surface by a moving point. Ansel Adams Gustave Caillebotte

Pablo Picasso

COLOR Consists of Hue (another word for color), Intensity (brightness) and Value (lightness or darkness). Henri Matisse Alexander Calder

COLOR Warm and Cool Colors. The color wheel below demonstrates the so-called warm and cool colors. In the upper left half you see the warm colors, yellow, orange, red and the in the lower right half you see the cool colors, green, blue, violet.

COLOR Monochromatic is a color scheme using a single hue and adding it’s tint, tone, and shade. Analogous is a color scheme using colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel. Complementary is a color scheme using colors that are across from each other on the color wheel.

COLOR A tint is the mixture of a color with white, which increases lightness, and a shade is the mixture of a color with black, which reduces lightness. A tone is produced either by the mixture of a color with gray, or by both tinting and shading.

VALUE The lightness or darkness of a color. Pablo Picasso MC Escher

SHAPE An enclosed area defined and determined by other art elements; 2-dimensional. Joan Miro

Shapes Natural shapes are created by natural forces not manmade. Organic shapes in art refers to shapes that have less well-defined edges as opposed to geometric shapes. They are generally shapes that are unpredictable and flowing. Geometric shapes are defined by a set of points or vertices and lines connecting the points in a closed chain, as well as the resulting interior points.

FORM A 3-dimensional object; or something in a 2-dimensional artwork that appears to be 3-dimensional. Lucien Freud For example, a triangle, which is 2-dimensional, is a shape, but a pyramid, which is 3-dimensional, is a form. Jean Arp

S P A C E The distance or area between, around, above, below, or within things. Robert Mapplethorpe Claude Monet Foreground, Middle-ground and Background (creates DEPTH) Positive (filled with something) and Negative (empty areas).

TEXTURE The surface quality or "feel" of an object, its smoothness, roughness, softness, etc. Textures may be actual (real) or implied (drawn).

Cecil Buller

The Principles of Design What we use to organize the Elements of Art, or the tools to make art.

BALANCE The way the elements are arranged to create a feeling of stability in a work. Alexander Calder

Symmetrical Balance Leonardo DaVinci The parts of an image are organized so that one side mirrors the other.

Asymmetrical Balance When one side of a composition does not reflect the design of the other. James Whistler

EMPHASIS The focal point of an image, or when one area or thing stand out the most. Jim Dine Gustav Klimt

CONTRAST A large difference between two things to create interest and tension. Ansel Adams Salvador Dali

RHYTHM- Created when one or more elements of design are used repeatedly to create a feeling of organized movement. MOVEMENT: The path the viewer’s eyes take through the work of art, often to focal areas. Marcel Duchamp

Vincent VanGogh

PATTERN The repeating of an object or symbol all over the artwork. Gustav Klimt

Repetition Works with pattern to make the work of art seem active. Rene’ Magritte

UNITY AND HARMONY When all the elements and principles work together to create a pleasing image. Johannes Vermeer

The use of differences and change to increase the visual interest of the work. VARIETY Marc Chagall

PROPORTION The comparative relationship of one part to another with respect to size, quantity, or degree; SCALE. Gustave Caillebotte

Art Critique Art Criticism- responding to, interpreting meaning, and making critical judgments about specific works of art. There are 4 steps to an art critique: Describe, Analyze, Interpret, Judge

4 Steps: 1. Describe- pure description of the object without value judgments, analysis, or interpretation. "What do you see?" 2. Analyze- determining what the features suggest and deciding why the artist used such features to convey specific ideas. "How did the artist do it?"

4 Steps: 3. Interpret- establishing the broader context for this type of art. "Why did the artist create it and what does it mean?” 4. Judge- giving it rank in relation to other works and of course considering a very important aspect of the visual arts; its originality. “Is it a good artwork?”

Vincent VanGogh