Unit III Assignment Art Gallery: Visual Elements

Unit III: Visual Literacy Elements and Principles

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In this section, we are going to be looking at how to analyze a work

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by looking at the elements and the principles of design.

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There are other ways to look at artwork, such as style

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and media, but we'll be focusing on numbers 1 and 2

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as shown on the screen.

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So let's look at the visual elements first. They are also called the formal elements.

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They include line, space, light and value,

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color, shape, volume, and texture.

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Starting with line: What does line do when you look at this work?

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So you can start asking yourself questions such as:

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Does this line lead your eye anywhere across the image?

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For example, does your eye follow the line

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horizontally—perhaps following the white line near the top from left to right

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and back again? Or perhaps the

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lines of the triangle near the center

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lead your eye up diagonally

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through the image. You can also ask yourself:

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Are the lines broken or solid? Are there outlines? Thick, thin?

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Do they define shapes such as

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squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles that we see?

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Do they connect, or do they divide things?

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In many ways, the lines in this work

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seem to divide the bands of color. And are the lines loose or controlled?

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There are more questions you can ask in this, but this is just the beginning

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of how to think about line. This is The Starry Night by Van Gogh.

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You may not know this, but Van Gogh was an avid pen and ink

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drawer, and he sketched constantly. What is really interesting about this drawing

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is that he draws the same way he paints

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in these little broken lines that lead the eye

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around the image. So if you look at the sky, you actually go on a visual journey

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as you follow the broken lines from left to right in

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swirling around and then back again. Another way to think of line

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is how something is drawn and oriented.

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So for example, this image is a painting

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called The Death of Socrates, and the artist,

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David, when he first began thinking of this composition,

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he started working on a grid, which you can see at the top

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right. And, if you notice,

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the postures and the arms of

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his main character, Socrates, very much follow the vertical

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and horizontal lines of a grid. And looking at the painting, you will see

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there's a lot of horizontals

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in the back in the bricks,

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and there’s verticals. There’s horizontals in the stones

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of the floor and just throughout. Horizontals and verticals

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are predominant. Well, if you look

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at an artist such as Delacroix:

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This is a painting called The Death of Sardanapalus.

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And, you can see peeking out of the top

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his idea of a preparatory sketch, which doesn’t have a single

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vertical or horizontal line at all. In fact, all the lines

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are curvaceous; they are dynamic;

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they fold in one onto the other; they serpentine.

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So there’s a lot of a lot of

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active line that is in constant movement,

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and it’s a very interesting contrast between this one and the work David

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that we looked at before. There’s also,

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sort of, a line of site.

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So although, in the work called Mademoiselle d'Avignon

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by Picasso, I have inserted these black lines to show you

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that there is a line of sight

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that is created by the direction

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that the figures in the artwork are looking. So, just for example, the

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image in the middle, the lady, she's actually looking

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at us. We are in her line of sight.

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While the two figures to the left and to the right, one is looking

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horizontally across to the right side, while the lady on the right

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is looking diagonally down and to the left.

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So I don’t know if you've ever looked at someone who is looking up the sky

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and you instinctively look at the sky yourself

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even know you’re not sure why. Well, it's because we tend to look at things that

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other people looking are at,

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and there is an implied line that's created by

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the direction we look that, as humans, we tend to follow.

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The next element we’re going to look at is space.

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So what you could start thinking about is: Is the space

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positive or negative (which we’ll look at in a moment)? Is it

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a deep space or a shallow space? Then, the question is: How is space created?

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How does the artist imply on a flat canvas

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that there is actually a sense of space?

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So, there’s different ways that artists can do this. They can

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overlap images, obviously if one things in front of another

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we know that there's a sense a space.

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Larger objects are put at the front, smaller

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objects near the back. And the use of linear perspective, which is in the image below,

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which means that as things reseed from us in space, they

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start to narrow towards a vanishing point,

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and that suggests, as well, that there is a

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sense of space. So if you look at this image,

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we're not looking at line of sight , we’re looking at this image in terms a space,

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and you'll notice that if you look down with the ladies’ feet are, there seems to be

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a very narrow strip

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upon which these women are standing.

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They’re not standing in a large, open room, but

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Rather on a thin band of floor,

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which suggests to us that there is a very shallow space

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in which they’re standing.

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With positive and negative space, mentioned before,

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basically positive space is the thing, the objects. For example, this yellow vase.

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You are positive space as you stand in a room.

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Negative space is all the space around the object.

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So, it is the space around the vase,

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or it is the space around you as you stand in that room.

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What’s interesting about negative space is it too can have shape and meaning.

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For example, in this vase and in this illustration called a Rubin’s vase,

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you'll notice that their two profiles on

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either side of the vases’ contours.

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The negative space is making a shape. Do you see that?

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The next thing we’re going to look at is light

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and value. Value basically means

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“from light to dark.” So it's the grayscale. Light and dark,

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or value, creates interest in work.

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It often can create contrast,

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so think of a scene where something is in dark shadow,

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but the side of a face is illuminated in bright light.

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This creates drama, a sense of

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action about to happen. When there is a low contrast

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or very little variation in value, the image seems to be more flat

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and less dynamic. We also associate things such as light with life,

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energy, day, while we associate dark with death,

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sadness, and night. The next element we’re going to look at

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is color, but complimentary colors basically are the colors

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opposite each other on the color wheel. So if you look

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at red, you'll notice the color directly opposite is green.

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Opposite blue, we have orange,

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and opposite yellow we have purple. If we go back to

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this painting by Picasso, you’ll notice that he has used the complementary colors

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of orange and blue in his work.

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The next element we’re going to look at is shape. So, ask yourself questions such as:

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Is the shape organic and natural, or is it geometric and man-made?

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Is it a solid shape? Is it outlined?

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Think about these things. For example, when you look at this work by

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Picasso:

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Are these the natural shapes you expect to see in women? Or, has he created

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unusual shapes in his compositions?

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The next element is volume.

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Volume basically means, “Does the shape look as if it’s two-dimensional

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or three-dimensional, and how did the artist do this?” If you look on the right of the

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screen,

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you’ll see an orb. The artist has shaded

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the bottom left to look like it’s in shadow

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and allowed for highlights in the top right so that this orb looks like a

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three-dimensional ball sitting on a table.

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If you look below that you’ll see the shape of the circle. It's just

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a gray, flat shape—no

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volume has been implied on the shape—

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so it is two-dimensional. If you look at the Venus

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in the painting provided, the artist has gone to paint to suggest that she's

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a three-dimensional woman.

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Do you see the highlights and the shading that he's put into her body to make her look

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three-dimensional? The next element is texture. Texture can be something that you can

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actually touch, or it can be visual. It can be

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rough or smooth, soft or hard, prickly,

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bumpy, a whole range of different words can describe it.

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This painting actually has straw stuck onto it,

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and so you know that if you were to touch it, it was

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it would have a very sort of bumpy, rough texture.

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But visually, there’s also texture to it. We can look at it and

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see that it's not smooth.