Organizing a Work of Art to Satisfy the Artists Expressive Intent Is Called

1. Line

There are many different types of lines, all characterized past their length being greater than their width. Lines tin be static or dynamic depending on how the artist chooses to utilise them. They help determine the motion, direction and energy in a piece of work of art. We see line all effectually us in our daily lives; telephone wires, tree branches, jet contrails and winding roads are just a few examples. Look at the photograph below to run across how line is part of natural and constructed environments.

In this paradigm of a lightning storm we can come across many unlike lines. Certainly the jagged, meandering lines of the lightning itself boss the epitome, followed by the straight lines of the skyline structures and the declension line. There are more subtle lines too, similar the lights along the buildings.  Lines are even unsaid past the reflections in the water.

The Nazca lines in the arid coastal plains of Republic of peru date to nearly 500 BCE were scratched into the rocky soil, depicting animals on an incredible scale, so big that they are best viewed from the air. Let'southward await at how the unlike kinds of line are made.

Diego Velazquez'due south Las Meninas from 1656, ostensibly a portrait of the Infanta Margarita, the daughter of Male monarch Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Spain, offers a sumptuous corporeality of artistic genius; its sheer size (almost 10 feet square), painterly style of naturalism, lighting effects, and the enigmatic figures placed throughout the canvas–including the artist himself –is one of the great paintings in western fine art history. Let's examine it (below) to uncover how Velazquez uses bones elements and principles of art to achieve such a masterpiece.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvass, 125.ii" x 108.vii". 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, every bit are the film frames in the groundwork and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures' dresses. How many other actual lines tin can you notice in the painting?

Implied lines are those created by visually connecting 2 or more than areas together. The gaze to the Infanta Margarita—the blonde cardinal figure in the limerick—from the meninas, or maids of honor, to the left and right 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 we have a sense of jagged implied line that keeps the lower part of the composition in motion, counterbalanced against the darker, more than static upper areas of the painting. Implied lines tin likewise exist created when two areas of different colors or tones come together. Can you place more unsaid lines in the painting? Where? Unsaid lines are found in three-dimensional artworks, too. The sculpture of the Laocoon below, a figure from Greek and Roman mythology, is, along with his sons, beingness strangled by sea snakes sent by the goddess Athena every bit wrath against his warnings to the Trojans non to accept the Trojan horse. The sculpture sets implied lines in motion as the figures writhe in agony against the snakes.

Laocoon Group, Roman copy of Greek original, Vatican Museum, Rome. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC BY-SA

Straight or classic lines provide construction to a composition. They tin be oriented to the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal axis of a surface. Straight lines are past nature visually stable, while still giving management to a composition. InLas Meninas, you lot can run across them in the canvas supports on the left, the wall supports and doorways on the correct, and in the background in matrices on the wall spaces betwixt the framed pictures. Moreover, the small horizontal lines created in the stair edges in the background help anchor the entire visual design of the painting. Vertical and horizontal straight lines provide the most stable compositions. Diagonal direct lines are usually more visually dynamic, unstable, and tension-filled.

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

Expressive lines are curved, adding an organic, more dynamic character to a piece of work of fine 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 canis familiaris'due south folded hind leg and coat pattern. Look over again at the Laocoon to meet expressive lines in the figures' flailing limbs and the sinuous form of the snakes. Indeed, the sculpture seems to be made up of nothing merely expressive lines, shapes and forms.

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

At that place are other kinds of line that encompass the characteristics of those above withal, taken together, aid create additional creative elements and richer, more than varied compositions. Refer to the images and examples below to get familiar with these types of line.

Outline, or contour line is the simplest of these. They create a path around the edge of a shape. In fact, outlines often ascertain shapes.

Outline, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Hatch lines are repeated at short intervals in generally one 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 boosted tone and texture. They can be oriented in any management. Multiple layers of crosshatch lines tin can give rich and varied shading to objects by manipulating the force per unit area of the drawing tool to create a large range of values.

Crosshatch, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Line quality is that sense of grapheme embedded in the way a line presents itself. Certain lines take qualities that distinguish them from others. Hard-edged, jagged lines take a staccato visual motion while organic, flowing lines create a more comfy feeling. Meandering lines tin be either geometric or expressive, and you can see in the examples how their indeterminate paths animate a surface to dissimilar degrees.

Lines, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Although line as 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 primary subject thing.

Calligraphic lines utilise quickness and gesture, more akin to paint strokes, to imbue an artwork with a fluid, lyrical character. 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 example from the Koran, created in the Standard arabic calligraphic manner, dates from the 9^th century.

Both these examples bear witness how artists use line as both a form of writing and a visual art form. American creative person Marking Tobey (1890–1976) was influenced by Oriental calligraphy, adapting its grade to the act of pure painting within a modern abstruse style described as white writing.

2. Shape

A shape is defined as an enclosed area in 2 dimensions. By definition shapes are always flat, merely the combination of shapes, color, and other means can make shapes appear three-dimensional, as forms. Shapes can be created in many means, the simplest by enclosing an expanse with an outline. They tin also be made by surrounding an area with other shapes or the placement of different textures side by side to each other—for instance, the shape of an isle surrounded by water. Because they are more complex than lines, shapes are unremarkably more important in the arrangement of compositions. The examples below give united states 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 difficult-edged, light, dark and mid-toned, that solidifies the limerick within the larger shape of the sheet. Looking at it this style, we tin view any work of art, whether two or three-dimensional, realistic, abstract or non-objective, in terms of shapes lonely.

Geometric Shapes vs. Organic Shapes

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

3. Form

Form is sometimes used to describe a shape that has an implied third dimension. In other words, an artist may attempt to make parts of a flat prototype announced iii-dimensional. Notice in the drawing below how the artist makes the dissimilar shapes appear three-dimensional through the use of shading. It'southward a flat image but appears three-dimensional.

This prototype is free of copyright restrictions.

When an image is incredibly realistic in terms of its forms (as well every bit color, space, etc.) such as this painting past Edwaert Collier, we telephone call that trompe 50'oeil, French for "fool the eye."

Edweart Collier, Trompe 50'oeil with Writing Materials,
oil on canvas, c. 1702.
This image is in the public domain.

4. Infinite

Space is the empty expanse surrounding or between existent or unsaid objects. Humans categorize infinite: there is outer space, that limitless void we enter beyond our sky; inner space, which resides in people'south minds and imaginations, and personal space, the important simply intangible surface area that surrounds each private and which is violated if someone else gets too shut. Pictorial space is apartment, and the digital realm resides in cyberspace. Fine art responds to all of these kinds of space.

Many artists are equally concerned with infinite in their works every bit they are with, say, color or form. In that location are many ways for the artist to present ideas of space. Recollect that many cultures traditionally use pictorial infinite as a window to view realistic bailiwick thing through, and through the subject matter 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 3-dimensional infinite on a flat surface, and appears to recede into the distance through the use of a horizon line and vanishing point(s) . You can see how one-point linear perspective is fix upward in the examples below:

1-Bespeak Linear Perspective, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

1-indicate perspective occurs when the receding lines announced to converge at a single signal on the horizon and used when the flat front of an object is facing the viewer. Annotation: Perspective can be used to show the relative size and recession into space of whatsoever object, but is most effective with difficult-edged 3-dimensional objects such equally buildings.

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

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

Two-betoken perspective occurs when the vertical edge of a cube is facing the viewer, exposing two sides that recede into the distance, one to each vanishing point.

Two-Point Perspective, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

View Gustave Caillebotte'south Paris Street, Rainy Weather from 1877 to see how two-bespeak perspective is used to give an accurate view to an urban scene.  The creative person'due south composition, however, is more than circuitous than but his employ of perspective. The figures are deliberately placed to direct the viewer's eye from the front right of the picture to the building'due south 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 mail service stands firmly in the eye to arrest our gaze from going right out the dorsum of the painting. Caillebotte includes the trivial metal arm at the pinnacle right of the post to directly u.s.a. again along a horizontal path, now keeping us from traveling off the elevation of the canvas. Equally relatively spare as the left side of the work is, the creative person 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 accurate, clear rendition of observed reality. Fifty-fifty after the invention of linear perspective, many cultures traditionally utilize a flatter pictorial infinite, relying on overlapping, size differences, or vertical placementof components in a 2-dimensional work of fine art. Examine the miniature painting of the Third Court 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 (as opposed to vanishing points), all very flat to the pic aeroplane. While the overall image is seen from higher up, the figures and trees appear as cutouts, seeming to float in mid air. Notice the towers on the far left and right are sideways to the flick plane. The trees and people occupying the upper parts of the image are meant to be perceived every bit further from the viewer as compared to those copse, buildings and people located about the bottom of the painting. This is an case of vertical placement.

Equally "incorrect" equally it looks, the painting does requite a detailed description of the mural 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 five hundred years using linear perspective, western ideas about how space is depicted accurately in two dimensions went through a revolution at the get-go of the 20^thursday century. A immature Spanish creative person, Pablo Picasso, moved to Paris, and so western culture'south 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 part by the chiseled forms, angular surfaces and asymmetry of African sculpture (refer dorsum to the Male Figurefrom Cameroon) and mask-like faces of early Iberian artworks. For more information well-nigh this of import 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 space that relied on, ironically, the flatness of the film aeroplane to bear and breathing traditional subject affair including figures, yet life and landscape. Cubist pictures, and eventually sculptures, became amalgams of dissimilar points of view, light sources and planar constructs. It was as if they were presenting their subject field thing in many ways at one time, all the while shifting foreground, middle ground and background so the viewer is not certain where one starts and the other ends. In an interview, the creative person explained cubism this style: "The problem is now to pass, to go around the object, and requite a plastic expression to the issue. All of this is my struggle to break with the 2-dimensional aspect*"(from Alexander Liberman, An Artist in His Studio, 1960, page 113). Public and disquisitional reaction to cubism was understandably negative, simply the artists' experiments with spatial relationships reverberated with others and became – forth with new means of using color – a driving forcefulness in the evolution of a modernistic art movement that based itself on the flatness of the picture plane. Instead of a window to look into, the flat 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'.

Yous can see the radical changes cubism fabricated in George Braque's landscape La Roche Guyonfrom 1909. The copse, houses, castle and surrounding rocks comprise almost a single complex form, stair-stepping up the canvas to mimic the distant hill at the meridian, all of it struggling upward and leaning to the right inside 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

Every bit the cubist style developed, its forms became even flatter. Juan Gris's The Sunblindfrom 1914 splays the still 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. Paradigm licensed under GNU Gratuitous Documentation License

It'due south not so hard to understand the importance of this new thought of space when placed in the context of comparable advances in science surrounding the plow of the nineteenth century. The Wright Brothers took to the air with powered flight in 1903, the same year Marie Curie won the kickoff of two Nobel prizes for her pioneering work in radiation. Sigmund Freud's new ideas on the inner spaces of the mind and its consequence on behavior were published in 1902, and Albert Einstein'due south calculations on relativity, the idea that infinite and time are intertwined, start appeared in 1905. Each of these discoveries added to human understanding and realligned the way we await 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; only the terrifying thing is that despite all this, we can merely detect what we know" (from Picasso on Art, A Pick of Views by Dore Ashton, (Souchere, 1960, page xv).

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

5. Value and Contrast

Value (or tone) is the relative lightness or darkness of a shape in relation to another. The value calibration, bounded on ane stop by pure white and on the other past blackness, and in betwixt a serial of progressively darker shades of grey, gives an artist the tools to make these transformations. The value calibration below shows the standard variations in tones. Values near the lighter stop of the spectrum are termed loftier-keyed, those on the darker end are low-keyed.

Value Scale, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC By

In two 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 2 examples beneath bear witness the outcome value has on changing a shape to a form.

2D Course, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC By

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

This same technique brings to life what begins as a simple line drawing of a young man'southward head in Michelangelo's Caput of a Youth and a Right Manus 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 utilize between the pencil and the paper they're drawing on. A drawing pencil'due south leads vary in hardness, each one giving a different tone than another. Washes of ink or color create values adamant by the amount of water the medium is dissolved into.

The utilize of loftier contrast, placing lighter areas of value confronting much darker ones, creates a dramatic effect, 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 loftier dissimilarity palette to an already dramatic scene to increase the visual tension for the viewer, while Adams deliberately makes utilize of low contrast to underscore the drabness of the landscape surrounding the figure on the bicycle.

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

6. Color

Color is the most circuitous creative element considering of the combinations and variations inherent in its employ.  Humans respond to colour combinations differently, and artists study and use color in role to give desired direction to their work.

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

The full spectrum of colors is contained in white calorie-free. Humans perceive colors from the calorie-free reflected off objects. A red object, for case, looks cherry-red because it reflects the red part of the spectrum. Information technology would be a different colour under a different light. Color theory starting time appeared in the 17^thursday century when English language mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white light could be divided into a spectrum by passing information technology through a prism.

The report of color in art and design often starts with color theory. Color theory splits up colors into three categories: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

The bones tool used is a colour bicycle, developed by Isaac Newton in 1666. A more complex model known every bit the colour tree, created past Albert Munsell, shows the spectrum fabricated upward of sets of tints and shades on connected planes.

There are a number of approaches to organizing colors into meaningful relationships. Most systems differ in construction merely.

Traditional Model

Traditional color theory is a qualitative endeavor to organize colors and their relationships. It is based on Newton's colour bike, and continues to be the virtually mutual system used by artists.

Blue Yellow Ruby-red Color Wheel. Released nether the GNU Complimentary Documentation License

Traditional colour theory uses the same principles as subtractive colour mixing (see beneath) but prefers different primary colors.

• The master colors are red, blue, and yellow. You find them equidistant from each other on the colour wheel. These are the "elemental" colors; not produced by mixing any other colors, and all other colors are derived from some combination of these three.
• The secondary colors are orangish (mix of red and yellowish), green (mix of blue and yellowish), and violet (mix of blueish and reddish).
• The tertiary colors are obtained by mixing 1 chief colour and one secondary color. Depending on amount of color used, different hues tin can be obtained such as blood-red-orange or yellow-green. Neutral colors (browns and grays) can be mixed using the three chief colors together.
• White and black lie outside of these categories. They are used to lighten or darken a color. A lighter color (fabricated past adding white to information technology) is called a tint , while a darker colour (made by adding black) is called a shade .

Color Mixing

Recall about color equally the effect of calorie-free reflecting off a surface. Understood in this way, color can be represented as a ratio of amounts of primary color mixed together. Color is produced when parts of the external light source's spectrum are absorbed by the fabric and not reflected back to the viewer's heart. For example, a painter brushes blue paint onto a sail. The chemical limerick of the paint allows all of the colors in the spectrum to be absorbed except blue, which is reflected from the pigment'due south surface.  Common applications of subtractive color theory are used in the visual arts, color printing and processing photographic positives and negatives.

• The primary colors are ruby, yellowish, and bluish.
• The secondary colors are orangish, green and violet.
• The tertiary colors are created by mixing a primary with a secondary color.
• Blackness is mixed using the three primary colors, while white represents the absenteeism of all colors. Note: considering of impurities in subtractive color, a truthful black is incommunicable to create through the mixture of primaries. Because of this the result is closer to brownish. Similar to additive color theory, lightness and darkness of a color is determined by its intensity and density.

Subtractive Color Mixing. Released nether the GNU Free Documentation License

Color Attributes

In that location are many attributes to color. Each i has an outcome on how we perceive it.

• Hue refers to colour itself, simply likewise to the variations of a color.
• Value (as discussed previously) refers to the relative lightness or darkness of one color next to some other. The value of a color can brand a difference in how it is perceived. A color on a dark background volition appear lighter, while that aforementioned color on a light groundwork will appear darker.
• Saturation refers to the purity and intensity of a color. The primaries are the nearly intense and pure, simply diminish as they are mixed to form other colors. The creation of tints and shades likewise diminish a colour's saturation. Two colors work strongest together when they share the same intensity.

Colour Interactions

Across 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 apply of variations of a unmarried hue. The advantage of using a monochromatic color scheme is that you get a loftier level of unity throughout the artwork because all the tones relate to one another. See this in Marking Tansey'southward Derrida Queries de Human from 1990.

Analogous Colour

Analogous colors are like to 1 another. As their proper name implies, analogous colors can be found next to one another on any 12-office color bike:

Analogous Color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

You can see the effect of analogous colors in Paul Cezanne's oil painting Auvers Panoromic View

Color Temperature

Colors are perceived to accept temperatures associated with them. The color wheel is divided into warm and absurd colors. Warm colors range from yellow to ruby-red, while cool colors range from xanthous-green to violet.  You lot can attain circuitous results using but a few colors when y'all pair them in warm and cool sets.

Warm cool colour, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are found directly opposite i another on a colour wheel. Here are some examples:

• regal and yellow
• greenish and red
• orange and blue

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

Blueish and orangish are complements. When placed near each other, complements create a visual tension. This colour scheme is desirable when a dramatic outcome is needed using only ii colors.

seven. Texture

At the most basic level, Three-dimensional works of art (sculpture, pottery, textiles, metalwork, etc.) and architecture have bodily texture which is frequently adamant by the textile that was used to create it: wood, rock, bronze, dirt, etc. Two-dimensional works of art like paintings, drawings, and prints may try to show implied texture through the apply of lines, colors, or other ways. When a painting has a lot of actual texture from the awarding of thick paint, nosotros call that impasto.

The kickoff epitome beneath is a sculpture, and like all three-dimensional objects information technology has actual texture.

The next 2 images are details from the painting The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck. Here, the artist has created unsaid texture. If you were to touch this painting you would not feel the material of the clothing and carpeting, the wooden floor or the smooth metallic of the chandelier, but our eyes "see" the texture.

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

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