The Organization of Lines Shapes Colors and Other Art Works in a Work of Art Is Known as

1. Line

In that location are many dissimilar types of lines, all characterized past their length existence greater than their width. Lines can exist static or dynamic depending on how the creative person chooses to use them. They help determine the motion, direction and energy in a work of art. We see line all around united states of america in our daily lives; telephone wires, tree branches, jet contrails and winding roads are simply a few examples. Look at the photograph below to see how line is part of natural and constructed environments.

In this image of a lightning storm we can see many different lines. Certainly the jagged, meandering lines of the lightning itself dominate the epitome, followed by the directly lines of the skyline structures and the declension line. At that place are more subtle lines too, like the lights along the buildings.  Lines are fifty-fifty implied by the reflections in the water.

The Nazca lines in the arid coastal plains of Peru engagement to almost 500 BCE were scratched into the rocky soil, depicting animals on an incredible scale, then big that they are best viewed from the air. Let's await at how the different 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 4 and Queen Mariana of Espana, offers a sumptuous amount of artistic genius; its sheer size (virtually ten feet foursquare), painterly way of naturalism, lighting effects, and the enigmatic figures placed throughout the canvas–including the creative person himself –is one of the great paintings in western art history. Let'south examine it (below) to uncover how Velazquez uses basic elements and principles of art to achieve such a masterpiece.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, 125.ii" x 108.7". Prado, Madrid. CC BY-SA

Actual lines are those that are physically present. The edge of the wooden stretcher bar at the left of Las Meninas is an actual line, equally are the picture frames in the groundwork and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures' dresses. How many other bodily lines can you discover in the painting?

Implied lines are those created by visually connecting two or more areas together. The gaze to the Infanta Margarita—the blonde key figure in the composition—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 betwixt the heads of all the figures in the painting we accept a sense of jagged unsaid line that keeps the lower role of the composition in motion, balanced against the darker, more than static upper areas of the painting. Unsaid lines can too be created when two areas of different colors or tones come up together. Can you identify more than implied lines in the painting? Where? Implied lines are constitute in three-dimensional artworks, likewise. The sculpture of the Laocoon below, a effigy from Greek and Roman mythology, is, along with his sons, existence strangled by bounding main snakes sent by the goddess Athena as wrath against his warnings to the Trojans non to take the Trojan horse. The sculpture sets implied lines in motion equally the figures writhe in agony against the snakes.

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

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

Straight lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Expressive lines are curved, adding an organic, more dynamic grapheme to a piece of work of art. Expressive lines are often rounded and follow undetermined paths. In Las Meninas you tin come across them in the aprons on the girls' dresses and in the dog's folded hind leg and coat blueprint. Look once more at the Laocoon to see expressive lines in the figures' flailing limbs and the sinuous class of the snakes. Indeed, the sculpture seems to be made upwards of zip but expressive lines, shapes and forms.

Organic lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

There are other kinds of line that encompass the characteristics of those to a higher place yet, taken together, help create boosted artistic elements and richer, more than varied compositions. Refer to the images and examples beneath to become familiar with these types of line.

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

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

Hatch lines are repeated at short intervals in generally 1 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 additional tone and texture. They can be oriented in whatsoever direction. Multiple layers of crosshatch lines tin requite 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 By

Line quality is that sense of graphic symbol embedded in the way a line presents itself. Certain lines have qualities that distinguish them from others. Hard-edged, jagged lines have a staccato visual motion while organic, flowing lines create a more comfortable feeling. Meandering lines can be either geometric or expressive, and you can come across in the examples how their indeterminate paths breathing a surface to different degrees.

Lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Although line every bit a visual element generally plays a supporting function in visual art, there are wonderful examples in which line carries a strong cultural significance as the primary subject affair.

Calligraphic lines use quickness and gesture, more akin to paint strokes, to imbue an artwork with a fluid, lyrical character. To run into this unique line quality, look upwardly the piece of work of Chinese poet and artist Dong Qichang, dating from the Ming dynasty (1555-1637). A more geometric example from the Koran, created in the Arabic calligraphic style, dates from the nine^thursday century.

Both these examples show how artists use line as both a form of writing and a visual art grade. American artist Marker Tobey (1890–1976) was influenced by Oriental calligraphy, adapting its form to the deed of pure painting within a modern abstruse fashion described every bit white writing.

2. Shape

A shape is defined equally an enclosed expanse in two dimensions. Past definition shapes are always flat, just the combination of shapes, color, and other means can make shapes appear iii-dimensional, as forms. Shapes tin be created in many ways, the simplest by enclosing an expanse with an outline. They tin also exist fabricated past surrounding an area with other shapes or the placement of different textures next to each other—for example, the shape of an island surrounded by water. Because they are more than complex than lines, shapes are usually more important in the organization of compositions. The examples below give usa an idea of how shapes are made.

Geometric Shapes, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Referring back to Velazquez'due south Las Meninas, information technology is fundamentally an arrangement of shapes; organic and hard-edged, light, nighttime and mid-toned, that solidifies the limerick within the larger shape of the sail. Looking at it this manner, nosotros can view any work of art, whether two or iii-dimensional, realistic, abstract or non-objective, in terms of shapes lonely.

Geometric Shapes vs. Organic Shapes

Shapes can be further categorized into geometric and organic. Examples of geometric shapes are the ones nosotros 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 gratis form: the shape of a tree, face, monkey, deject, etc.

3. Form

Course is sometimes used to describe a shape that has an implied third dimension. In other words, an artist may try to make parts of a flat paradigm appear three-dimensional. Detect in the cartoon below how the artist makes the dissimilar shapes appear three-dimensional through the employ of shading. It's a apartment prototype but appears three-dimensional.

This image is free of copyright restrictions.

When an image is incredibly realistic in terms of its forms (as well equally color, space, etc.) such as this painting by Edwaert Collier, nosotros call that trompe 50'oeil, French for "fool the center."

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

4. Space

Infinite is the empty area surrounding or between real or implied objects. Humans categorize space: there is outer space, that limitless void we enter across our sky; inner space, which resides in people's minds and imaginations, and personal space, the important but intangible area that surrounds each individual and which is violated if someone else gets too close. Pictorial space is apartment, and the digital realm resides in cyberspace. Art responds to all of these kinds of space.

Many artists are as concerned with space in their works as they are with, say, color or class. In that location are many ways for the artist to present ideas of infinite. Remember that many cultures traditionally utilize pictorial space as a window to view realistic subject affair through, and through the subject matter they present ideas, narratives and symbolic content. The innovation of linear perspective, an unsaid geometric pictorial construct dating from fifteenth-century Europe, affords us the accurate illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, and appears to recede into the distance through the use of a horizon line and vanishing bespeak(s) . You can see how 1-point linear perspective is fix upwards in the examples below:

One-Indicate Linear Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

One-point perspective occurs when the receding lines appear to converge at a single bespeak on the horizon and used when the apartment front of an object is facing the viewer. Note: Perspective can exist used to show the relative size and recession into infinite of any object, but is near effective with hard-edged three-dimensional objects such as buildings.

A classic Renaissance artwork using one point perspective is Leonardo da Vinci'south The Last Supper from 1498. Da Vinci composes the piece of work by locating the vanishing point directly backside the head of Christ, thus drawing the viewer's attention to the center. His arms mirror the receding wall lines, and, if we follow them every bit lines, would converge at the same vanishing point.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1498. Fresco. Santa Maria della Grazie. Work is in the public domain.

Two-point 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 indicate.

Two-Indicate Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

View Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Weather from 1877 to run into how 2-point perspective is used to give an accurate view to an urban scene.  The artist's composition, nevertheless, is more complex than merely his use of perspective. The figures are deliberately placed to straight the viewer'southward eye from the front end right of the picture to the edifice's front edge on the left, which, similar 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 stands firmly in the middle to abort our gaze from going correct out the back of the painting. Caillebotte includes the trivial metal arm at the top right of the post to straight us again forth a horizontal path, now keeping united states from traveling off the summit of the canvas. Every bit relatively spare as the left side of the work is, the creative person crams the right side with difficult-edged and organic shapes and forms in a complex play of positive and negative space.

The perspective system is a cultural convention well suited to a traditional western European idea of the "truth," that is, an accurate, articulate rendition of observed reality. Even after the invention of linear perspective, many cultures traditionally use a flatter pictorial space, 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 equanimous from a number of different vantage points (as opposed to vanishing points), all very apartment to the picture aeroplane. While the overall image is seen from to a higher place, the figures and trees appear as cutouts, seeming to bladder in mid air. Observe the towers on the far left and right are sideways to the picture plane. The copse and people occupying the upper parts of the prototype are meant to be perceived equally further from the viewer as compared to those trees, buildings and people located near the bottom of the painting. This is an example of vertical placement.

As "wrong" equally it looks, the painting does give a detailed description of the landscape and structures on the palace grounds.

Third Court of the Topkapi Palace, from the Hunername, 1548. Ottoman miniature painting, Topkapi Museum, Istanbul. CC Past-SA

After virtually five hundred years using linear perspective, western ideas about how space is depicted accurately in 2 dimensions went through a revolution at the beginning of the 20^th century. A immature Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, moved to Paris, then western civilization's majuscule of fine art, and largely reinvented pictorial space with the invention of Cubism, ushered in dramatically past his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. He was influenced in part by the chiseled forms, angular surfaces and disproportion of African sculpture (refer back to the Male Effigyfrom Cameroon) and mask-similar faces of early Iberian artworks. For more than information about this of import painting, listen to the following question and answer.

In the early 20th century, Picasso, his friend Georges Braque and a handful of other artists struggled to develop a new infinite that relied on, ironically, the flatness of the picture airplane to carry and animate traditional field of study matter including figures, still life and mural. Cubist pictures, and somewhen sculptures, became amalgams of unlike points of view, lite sources and planar constructs. It was as if they were presenting their subject affair in many means at once, all the while shifting foreground, center ground and groundwork and then the viewer is not sure where one starts and the other ends. In an interview, the artist explained cubism this way: "The problem is now to pass, to go around the object, and give a plastic expression to the result. All of this is my struggle to break with the 2-dimensional attribute*"(from Alexander Liberman, An Artist in His Studio, 1960, page 113). Public and critical reaction to cubism was understandably negative, but the artists' experiments with spatial relationships reverberated with others and became – along with new ways of using color – a driving force in the evolution of a modernistic fine art motility that based itself on the flatness of the movie plane. Instead of a window to await into, the flat surface becomes a basis on which to construct formal arrangements of shapes, colors and compositions. For another perspective on this thought, refer back to module i's discussion of 'abstraction'.

Y'all can see the radical changes cubism made in George Braque'southward landscape La Roche Guyonfrom 1909. The trees, houses, castle and surrounding rocks incorporate about a single complex form, stair-stepping up the canvas to mimic the distant loma at the top, all of it struggling upwards and leaning to the right within a shallow pictorial space.

George Braque, Castle at La Roche Guyon, 1909. Oil on canvass. Stedelijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Licensed through GNU and Creative Commons

Every bit the cubist way developed, its forms became even flatter. Juan Gris's The Sunblindfrom 1914 splays the still life it represents across the canvas.  Collage elements similar paper reinforce pictorial flatness.

Juan Gris, The Sunblind, 1914. Gouache, collage, chalk, and charcoal on canvas. Tate Gallery, London. Paradigm licensed under GNU Free Documentation License

It's not and then difficult to understand the importance of this new idea of infinite when placed in the context of comparable advances in science surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century. The Wright Brothers took to the air with powered flying in 1903, the same twelvemonth Marie Curie won the first of two Nobel prizes for her pioneering work in radiations. Sigmund Freud's new ideas on the inner spaces of the heed and its effect on behavior were published in 1902, and Albert Einstein's calculations on relativity, the thought that infinite and time are intertwined, first appeared in 1905. Each of these discoveries added to human being understanding and realligned the manner we look at ourselves and our world. Indeed, Picasso, speaking of his struggle to ascertain cubism, said "Even Einstein did not know it either! The status of discovery is outside ourselves; but the terrifying matter is that despite all this, nosotros can only find what nosotros know" (from Picasso on Art, A Selection of Views by Dore Ashton, (Souchere, 1960, page 15).

Three-dimensional space doesn't undergo this fundamental transformation. It remains a visual and bodily relationship between 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 one end past pure white and on the other past blackness, and in between a series of progressively darker shades of grayness, gives an artist the tools to make these transformations. The value calibration below shows the standard variations in tones. Values well-nigh the lighter end of the spectrum are termed high-keyed, those on the darker end are low-keyed.

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

In two dimensions, the employ of value gives a shape the illusion of form or mass and lends an entire composition a sense of light and shadow. The two examples below show the outcome value has on changing a shape to a form.

2D Form, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC Past

3D Course, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC By

This same technique brings to life what begins as a elementary line cartoon of a fellow's caput in Michelangelo's Head of a Youth and a Correct Paw from 1508. Shading is created with line (refer to our discussion of line before 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 newspaper they're cartoon on. A cartoon pencil's leads vary in hardness, each one giving a different tone than another. Washes of ink or colour create values determined by the amount of water the medium is dissolved into.

The use of high contrast, placing lighter areas of value against much darker ones, creates a dramatic effect, while low contrast gives more subtle results. These differences in effect are evident in 'Guiditta and Oloferne' past the Italian painter Caravaggio, and Robert Adams' photograph Untitled, Denver from 1970-74. Caravaggio uses a loftier contrast palette to an already dramatic scene to increase the visual tension for the viewer, while Adams deliberately makes utilise of low contrast to underscore the drabness of the landscape surrounding the effigy on the bicycle.

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

half dozen. Color

Color is the about complex artistic element because of the combinations and variations inherent in its use.  Humans respond to color combinations differently, and artists report and use color in office to give desired management to their piece of work.

Colour is primal to many forms of art. Its relevance, use and role in a given work depend on the medium of that work. While some concepts dealing with color are broadly applicable across media, others are not.

The full spectrum of colors is independent in white calorie-free. Humans perceive colors from the calorie-free reflected off objects. A red object, for example, looks cherry because it reflects the blood-red part of the spectrum. It would be a dissimilar color under a different lite. Color theory first appeared in the 17^thursday century when English mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white low-cal could exist divided into a spectrum by passing it through a prism.

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

The bones tool used is a colour wheel, developed by Isaac Newton in 1666. A more circuitous model known every bit the color tree, created by Albert Munsell, shows the spectrum fabricated up 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 structure only.

Traditional Model

Traditional color theory is a qualitative attempt to organize colors and their relationships. Information technology is based on Newton's color wheel, and continues to be the nearly common organisation used by artists.

Blue Yellow Red Color Bike. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

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

• The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. You notice them equidistant from each other on the color 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 orange (mix of red and yellow), green (mix of blue and xanthous), and violet (mix of blueish and red).
• The tertiary colors are obtained by mixing one main color and i secondary color. Depending on amount of color used, different hues can exist obtained such as carmine-orange or yellow-green. Neutral colors (browns and grays) can be mixed using the three master colors together.
• White and black lie outside of these categories. They are used to lighten or darken a color. A lighter color (made past calculation white to it) is called a tint , while a darker colour (made by adding black) is chosen a shade .

Color Mixing

Retrieve most color equally the issue of lite reflecting off a surface. Understood in this manner, color can be represented as a ratio of amounts of primary color mixed together. Colour is produced when parts of the external light source'south spectrum are absorbed by the material and non reflected back to the viewer's eye. For example, a painter brushes blue paint onto a canvas. The chemical limerick of the paint allows all of the colors in the spectrum to be absorbed except blue, which is reflected from the paint'south surface.  Common applications of subtractive colour theory are used in the visual arts, color press and processing photographic positives and negatives.

• The master colors are scarlet, yellowish, and bluish.
• The secondary colors are orangish, green and violet.
• The tertiary colors are created past mixing a primary with a secondary color.
• Black is mixed using the three chief colors, while white represents the absenteeism of all colors. Notation: because of impurities in subtractive colour, a true black is impossible to create through the mixture of primaries. Because of this the result is closer to brown. Similar to additive color theory, lightness and darkness of a color is determined by its intensity and density.

Subtractive Color Mixing. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

Color Attributes

There are many attributes to color. Each i has an effect on how we perceive it.

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

Color Interactions

Across creating a mixing hierarchy, colour theory too provides tools for understanding how colors work together.

Monochrome

The simplest colour interaction is monochrome. This is the apply of variations of a single hue. The advantage of using a monochromatic color scheme is that you go a loftier level of unity throughout the artwork because all the tones relate to one another. See this in Mark Tansey's Derrida Queries de Man from 1990.

Analogous Color

Analogous colors are like to one another. Equally their name implies, analogous colors tin can be found next to one another on any 12-part color wheel:

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

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

Color Temperature

Colors are perceived to have temperatures associated with them. The color wheel is divided into warm and cool colors. Warm colors range from yellow to crimson, while absurd colors range from yellow-green to violet.  You can achieve complex results using just a few colors when you pair them in warm and cool sets.

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

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are found directly opposite one another on a colour bicycle. Here are some examples:

• purple and yellow
• green and red
• orange and blue

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

Blue and orangish are complements. When placed near each other, complements create a visual tension. This color scheme is desirable when a dramatic effect is needed using just ii colors.

seven. Texture

At the well-nigh basic level, Three-dimensional works of art (sculpture, pottery, textiles, metalwork, etc.) and architecture take bodily texture which is often adamant by the material that was used to create it: wood, stone, bronze, clay, etc. 2-dimensional works of fine art like paintings, drawings, and prints may try to testify unsaid texture through the use of lines, colors, or other ways. When a painting has a lot of bodily texture from the application of thick paint, we phone call that impasto.

The starting time image beneath is a sculpture, and similar all 3-dimensional objects information technology has actual texture.

The adjacent 2 images are details from the painting The Arnolfini Portrait past Jan van Eyck. Hither, the artist has created implied texture. If you lot were to touch this painting you lot would non feel the material of the clothing and rug, the wooden flooring or the smooth metallic of the chandelier, but our optics "see" the texture.

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

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