Visual Elements
-Line, Shape, Value, Color, Texture
Line
-The abstract necessity. Lines can conjure a symbol in our minds and communicate ideas to us
- Pictography (object)
- Ideograph (something not so tangible, symbolizes the idea of a thing)
-Line Quality
Egon Schiele, Contour Line Drawing
-interest is formed by the variation (thick, smooth, light, dark)
- line quality in calligraphic
- Freehand Contour Drawing
- You can see how effective a line can describe something visually
- Structural line drawing
- Has construction and object lines. They can be the same but the object line is born from the construction line. The object line becomes darker and a focus to the eye.
-3 Types of Line
- Actual Line
- Implied Line
- dotted line
- Edges
- a line created by two things coming together
Shape
-Two Types of Shape
- Organic
- Natural made shape
- Tend to be irregular, more curve linear
- Natural made shape
- Geometric
- Made with angles, mostly man made
- There can be geometric shapes in nature like crystals etc.
- Made with angles, mostly man made
-Negative vs Positive Shape
- Positive Shape
- the object
- Negative Shape
- the space around the shape
Value
-The lightness or darkness of something
-Chiaroscuro (Brother Griffin mentioned this will be on the quiz*)
- Contrasting values of light and dark to make something look realistic. Light and dark, black and white, shading.
Lorenzo Di Credi, Drapery for a standing man, represented frontally
Color
-Color Categories
- 1 Primary Colors
- Red, yellow, blue
- These cannot be made by combinations of other colors
- Red, yellow, blue
- 2 Secondary Colors
- Orange, green, violet
- made by combinations of primary colors
- Orange, green, violet
- Tertiary Colors
- Colors made by the combination of a primary and a secondary color
(People respond to color emotionally. It is the most emotional of the elements)
-Three ways you can talk about color
- Hue
- the name of the color
- Value
- the lightness or darkness of a color
- Intensity
- Brightness or dullness of the color
- The saturation of the hue
- To dull a color add grey or complementary colors
- Color + white = tint
- Color + gray = tone
- Color + black = shade
- Brightness or dullness of the color
(It doesn’t matter what you call a color or what it is, it only matters what its next to)
-Color Schemes (basic ways of arranging colors)
- Monochromatic
- One color + black and white
Leonardo da Vinci, Self Portrait
- Analogous
- Color + its adjacent color (whatever is close/ similar to it)
- ex: painting with orange and yellow-orange colors
- Color + its adjacent color (whatever is close/ similar to it)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Madame Renoir
- Complementary
- Color + Its opposite
- ex: Red and Green
- Color + Its opposite
- Split Complementary
- The adjacent of the opposite
- ex: Red with blue green and yellow green. You’re splitting the opposite color
- The adjacent of the opposite
- Triadic
- 1/3
- ex: Red, blue, yellow
- 1/3
-Optical effects of color (terms that describe psychological activity when seeing color)
- Simultaneous contrast
- Opposites intensify
- This is why grocery stores will put green garnish around red meats, to make the meat look more red.
- Opposites intensify
- Afterimage
- Visual retention of an image
- Look at the red dot in the flag below for 30 seconds, then look at the dot in the center of the white section. This is afterimage!
- Visual retention of an image
- Optical Mixing
- Your eye will make colors by having certain colors next to each other.
- Mechanical Mixing
- Physically mixing colors
Texture/Pattern
-Texture
- Rough vs Smooth
- Actual Texture
- Implied Texture
- Like how paintings can look like they have texture
Perspective
-There are two types of perspective
- Linear Perspective
- Use of lines
Piero Della Francesca and Luciano Laurana, View of an Ideal City
- Atmospheric Perspective
- Atmosphere and distance
- items looking further away because they are less defined
- Atmosphere and distance
Intro to the Visual Arts 