Art

Line

Imagine putting the point of your pen to a piece of paper. Now, imagine that you move the point of your pen across the surface of the paper. You have a created a line. Your textbook defines a line as a “path traced by a moving point” (75).

 

Lines however, have many different qualities. Lines can be thin, thick, or somewhere in between. Lines can be straight and geometric. Lines can be curly and organic. Lines can suggest stillness. Lines can suggest movement. Lines can be actual or implied. Lines can be fast, slow, aggressive, heavy, soft, light, wandering, delicate, sensual, rhythmic, harsh, gritty, etc.

Let’s take a look at a few different qualities of line:

 

Quality of Line: Contour and Outline

In studying line, it’s important to observe that, in nature, lines do not exist.

In art, we use lines to visually define the world around us, but actually they aren’t really there. If you were to draw a friend, you might make a black outline of the human body, but there is no dark outline running around the outside of the body. The line we perceive as a boundary between the human form and the world that surrounds it is called a contour line. Getlein defines contour lines as the lines we use to record contours, or the “boundaries we perceive of three-dimensional forms” (77).  Egon Schiele used contour lines to differentiate the male figure from the background in his Kneeling Male Nude (Self-Portrait)of 1910 below.

 

 

Quality of Line: Direction and Movement

Artists use horizontal and vertical lines suggest stability and stillness and diagonal lines to suggest movement. Consider Thomas Eakin’s The Biglin Brothers Racing below. Two rowers sit in a boat that appears to be very securely afloat. The line Eakins uses to define the bottom of the boat is horizontal. Yet, the boat is not just floating on the water, it is moving. To suggest the movement of the boat, Eakins uses diagonal line in his depiction of the oars, the rowers arms, and the rower’s backs. The dynamic, diagonal lines implies motion and allows us as viewers to understand that the boat is not at rest, but instead is gliding across the surface of the water.

 

Artists also use lines to help direct the audience’s eye towards important aspects of a work of art. The stair railing in the right-hand of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Aquila below becomes a bold diagonal line focusing the viewer’s attention to the figure at the end of the line.  It is as if Cartier-Bresson is using this diagonal line like an arrow telling you the viewer to look at the woman carrying the bread.

 

Quality of Line: Implied Line

Examine Gabriel Orozco's Horses Running Endlessly, 1995 below. While we might perceive lines between the colored squares of the board, no lines actually exist. When two flat shapes of different color come together, an implied line is created between the two differently-colored shapes.   >

Crosshatching is a drawing technique that allows the artist to build up a range of light and dark areas. It also is used to suggest the tilt of the surface drawn. A "hatch" is a small mark or line made by any drawing tool. To "cross" your hatch is to criss-cross one line on top of another. Crosshatch also conveys the direction of a surface. The eye follows the direction of the lines and presumes that the surface goes in the direction of the hatching. Which way does the surface of the face move? Does it go across, from side to side, or does it go up and down? Artists use crosshatching marks to give form to different objects and to make them lighter and darker in areas.  Look at this detail from a 1491 pen and ink Self-Portrait by Albrecht Dürer.  You can see how the crosshatches are used to define form through shadow and highlight. Some hatches direct us down the sides of the forehead and others across the cheeks.