Elements of Art: The building blocks used by artists to create visual art.
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Color: an element of art
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Color Wheel: a circle with different colored sectors used to show the relationship between colors.
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Primary Colors: red, yellow and blue. The colors from which all other colors are created by mixing.
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Secondary Colors: green, orange and purple. Colors created by mixing primary colors only.
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Intermediate Color: a color created by mixing a primary color with the secondary color next to it; also called a tertiary color; intermediate colors include red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet.
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Color Schemes: groupings of colors that are related on the color wheel.
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Analogous Colors: colors that appear next to each other on the color wheel. For example, red, orange, and yellow are analogous colors. If mixed, these colors tend to make variations of the original colors.
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Complimentary Colors: colors that appear opposite to one another on the color wheel. These colors compliment one another and are often used together in order to create a strong visual impact (one example is the UW Husky colors). Sometimes also called contrasting colors. If mixed, complimentary colors tend to create “muddy” tones such as black, brown, or gray.
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Warm Colors: a group of colors on the color wheel that are associated with warmth, such as red, yellow, and orange (and variations on these colors such as pink, red-orange, etc.). In art, warm colors appear to advance toward the viewer.
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Cool Colors: a group of colors on the color wheel that includes blues, greens, and violets. In artwork, cool colors appear to be farther away from the viewer.
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Shape: a flat (2-dimensional) figure created within joined lines.
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Line: an important element of design. Lines can be dark/light, thick/thin, blurred/exact, or broken/continuous. Even simple lines can show movement, define objects, tell stories, show texture and be beautiful or interesting.
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Form: a 3-dimensional figure, a shape that exists in space instead of flat like on paper.
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Space: an element of visual arts; the area above, below, around, and within an artwork. The illusion of depth or space on a flat surface can be created by using the following techniques: rendering shapes and forms so that they overlap and using size, detail, value, color, and perspective.
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Texture: Texture is an element of art which portrays the quality of a surface (how something feels or appears to feel) by using various techniques. Artists use texture (real or implied) to add interest and variety to pictures. This makes the viewer experience the art on two levels — one through your eyes and the other through your fingers (or what you expect you would feel if you touched the painting).
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Value (Hue/Shade/Tint): an element of art; the lightness and darkness of a line, shape, or form; a measure of relative lightness and darkness.
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Hues, Shades and Tints: a color and variations on a color.
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Hue: the pure color as it would fall on the color wheel.
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Shades: hues with added black.
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Tints: hues added with white.
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Monochromatic: a color palette restricted to one color and its tints and hues.
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Principles of Design: How artists use and combine the elements of art.
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Balance (Symmetry/Asymmetry): a principle of design; the arrangement of elements that makes individual parts of a composition appear equally important; an arrangement of the elements to create an equal distribution of visual weight throughout the format or composition.
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Types of balance:
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Symmetrical balance (or Symmetry) means that the work of art is the same on one side as the other, a mirror image of itself, on both sides of a center line.
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Asymmetrical balance (or Asymmetry) means that the two halves of the work of art are different, however, try to create balance. In other words, although the sides may not be exactly the same, there will be elements that interact in a way that makes each side equally important.
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Radial symmetry means the weight of the image or form radiates from a center point.
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Contrast: the arrangement of opposite elements or using opposing qualities next to each other so as to create visual interest, excitement, and drama. For example, large vs. small shapes, black and white (contrasting values), organic/curvy and geometric/angular (contrasting lines/shapes/forms), and rough and smooth (contrasting textures).
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Emphasis (Focal Point): the place the eye naturally travels to in a work of art. It can also be described as the focus or center of interest. Focal Point can be created by light, color, or line and movement in a work of art. Artists create focal points in their work to draw us in and keep us interested.
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Movement: In art, movement can mean anything from literal movement, found in some sculpture or mobiles, to implied movement or how an artist makes our eye move around the work.
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Pattern: the repetition of the elements of visual arts in an organized way.
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Rhythm: the repetition of an element (color, shape, line, etc.) creating visual movement in an artwork.
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Scale/Proportion: Scale is how we measure the relationship of a created object to the original (like a house plan or model trains). Proportion is the relationship of parts of a single object to the whole (like a person's hand in relationship to his/her head). These two terms are often used interchangeably.
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Unity: the connecting of parts of a work of art, creating a feeling of peace and a sense of completeness.
Art Mediums: Materials used to create art.
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Clay: a material made from small particles of weathered rock that can be manipulated when it is soft and wet then permanently hardens under extreme heat.
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Drawing: is the basis of two-dimensional art. It involves making marks on a 2-dimensional surface.
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Glass: The glass we use for art is made of silica and is an amorphous solid, meaning that it doesn’t have a crystalline structure. It is a hard liquid which gets much softer when it is heated.
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Metal: a solid material which is typically hard, shiny, malleable (able to be manipulated), fusible (will stick to itself when heated) and conducts electricity and heat.
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Painting: There are many different mediums for painting. Or, in other words, many different substances that hold the pigment and allow a person to paint. These works represent some of the major groups of painting mediums. Although they appear roughly chronologically, most mediums continue to be used.
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Photography: an artist’s tool like that of a paintbrush that uses light to create images. It was invented in the early 19th century and continues to change even now. The camera is a mechanical device used to capture and record moments and stories in our world and our lives. There are many types of photographs which often fall into three basic categories: landscape, portrait, and documentary.
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Printmaking: making pictures or designs by printing them from specially prepared plates or blocks.
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Relief: includes woodcuts, linocut and wood engraving. Relief methods are like rubber stamps – the raised area holds the ink. Ink is rolled over the surface and the image is transferred to paper by laying the paper on the inked surface and rubbing the back of the paper with even pressure.
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Intaglio: includes drypoint, engraving, and mezzotint, etching and aquatint. In intaglio, the impressions (carved lines) hold the ink and make the image. The ink fills in the crevices and the wet paper absorbs and transfers the color when pressure is applied.
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Lithography: based on the principle that oil and water do not mix. An oily pencil is used to draw on a flat stone. It is treated and then a water based ink is used to make the print in the areas not resistant.
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Screen printing: akin to stencils. A fine silk cloth is mounted on a frame (like a screen) and the artist makes a sort of stencil with a type of glue, blocking the ink from coming through certain areas when the ink is forced through with a squeegee.
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Sculpture: a work of art that is primarily 3D. Sculpture can be made of many different materials in various ways.
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Textiles: anything made of a soft, flexible material.
Art Concepts & Artistic Movements
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Abstraction: art that is based upon a recognizable object which has been simplified to reveal some underlying form or basic characteristic. Sometimes all of the recognizable attributes of the object will be removed.
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Art as Story: Artists often try to tell a story with a work of art. It's no wonder people always say “a picture paints a thousand words.”
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Art as Social Commentary: Art often reflects the political, religious, or social views of both the artist and the people who buy the art. Because art is expensive, governments and religions often are the groups who can afford art. Also, because governments and churches want to affect the most people possible, they also use art as a method of stating who they are, what they believe, and what they want other people to believe. Artists themselves also often have deeply held beliefs that they want to express through their art.
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Atmospheric Perspective: the effect on the appearance of an object of the air/space between the object and the viewer. In the foreground, colors are warmer and more intense and values are darker; in the distance, the details of an object appear to decrease, colors appear cooler and less intense, and values lighten and fade.
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Expressionism: Artists often make things to express how they feel about something. Sometimes they draw what music “looks” like or what it looks like to feel happy or scared or angry or peaceful. Many times these pictures don’t have to have “objects” in them. Artists may use shapes or colors or patterns to express these ideas.
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Indigenous Arts: created by the original people to inhabit a land: Australian Aboriginals, New Zealand’s Maori people, Northwest Coastal people of the U.S., Meso and central America, the Amazon, the Artic, Asia and the Asia-Pacific are all examples of locations with indigenous traditions.
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Light, Space, Mass, and Modeling: When creating the illusion of something being 3-dimensional we have to play with the light and dark values of the image. We do that with shading.
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Shading: the technique of adding layers of marks to create dark areas that trick you eye into thinking that there is less light in that space. The closer together or more overlapped the marks are the darker the shading will appear.
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Hatching: is the use of short parallel lines which, depending how close together they are, create darker areas on the surface of the form.
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Crosshatching: is the use of short lines that cross over each other, depending how dense they are, will create darker areas on the form.
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Stippling: is the use of layers of dots, depending how dense they are, will create darker areas on the form.
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Blending: takes advantage of the drawing mediums ability to smudge. This technique will create shades by smudging the drawing medium with a smudge stick, finger, cotton swab or other soft material to create a gradation of dark to light areas.
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Perspective: a way of describing all the things that create the illusion of depth.
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Portraiture: when the artist renders a particular person whether it looks exactly like them or not, it is called a portrait.
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Positive/Negative Space: refers to an art object and the space around it.
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Still Life: when an object or group of objects is the main focus of a work of art.
