The Direction on Light on an Object Can Be Determined by What on Theobjec in Art

1. Line

At that place are many unlike types of lines, all characterized by their length being greater than their width. Lines can be static or dynamic depending on how the artist chooses to employ them. They help make up one's mind the move, direction and energy in a piece of work of art. We run into line all around usa in our daily lives; telephone wires, tree branches, jet contrails and winding roads are just a few examples.

The Nazca lines in the arid coastal plains of Peru appointment to about 500 BCE were scratched into the rocky soil, depicting animals on an incredible scale, and so large that they are best viewed from the air. Permit's look at how the different kinds of line are made.

Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas from 1656, ostensibly a portrait of the Infanta Margarita, the daughter of Rex Philip 4 and Queen Mariana of Spain, offers a sumptuous amount of artistic genius; its sheer size (near x feet square), painterly style of naturalism, lighting effects, and the enigmatic figures placed throughout the canvas–including the artist himself –is 1 of the great paintings in western art history. Let'south examine information technology (below) to uncover how Velazquez uses basic elements and principles of art to achieve such a masterpiece.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on sheet, 125.2" x 108.7". Prado, Madrid. CC BY-SA

Actual lines are those that are physically present. The border of the wooden stretcher bar at the left of Las Meninas is an actual line, as are the movie frames in the background and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures' dresses. How many other actual lines tin can you find in the painting?

Implied lines are those created by visually connecting two or more areas together. The gaze to the Infanta Margarita—the blonde central figure in the composition—from the meninas, or maids of honor, to the left and correct of her, are unsaid lines. Implied lines can also be created when 2 areas of unlike colors or tones come together. Can you place more than implied lines in the painting? Where? Implied lines are plant in three-dimensional artworks, also. The sculpture of the Laocoon below, a figure from Greek and Roman mythology, is, forth with his sons, existence strangled by sea snakes sent by the goddess Athena as wrath confronting his warnings to the Trojans not to take the Trojan horse. The sculpture sets unsaid lines in motion every bit the figures writhe in agony against the snakes.

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

Straight or classic lines provide structure to a composition. They can exist oriented to the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal axis of a surface. Direct lines are past nature visually stable, while still giving direction to a composition. InLas Meninas, you tin can see them in the canvas supports on the left, the wall supports and doorways on the correct, and in the background in matrices on the wall spaces between the framed pictures. Moreover, the small horizontal lines created in the stair edges in the background help anchor the entire visual design of the painting. Vertical and horizontal straight 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 graphic symbol to a work of fine art. Expressive lines are frequently rounded and follow undetermined paths. In Las Meninas y'all can see them in the aprons on the girls' dresses and in the dog's folded hind leg and coat blueprint. Look again at the Laocoon to come across expressive lines in the figures' flailing limbs and the sinuous course of the snakes. Indeed, the sculpture seems to exist fabricated up of cypher but expressive lines, shapes and forms.

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

In that location are other kinds of line that encompass the characteristics of those above all the same, taken together, aid create additional artistic elements and richer, more than varied compositions. Refer to the images and examples below to become familiar with these types of line.

Outline, or contour line is the simplest of these. They create a path around the border of a shape. In fact, outlines frequently define shapes.

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

Hatch lines are repeated at brusque intervals in generally one 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 boosted tone and texture. They can be oriented in any direction. Multiple layers of crosshatch lines can requite rich and varied shading to objects by manipulating the pressure level 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 character embedded in the way a line presents itself. Sure lines have qualities that distinguish them from others. Hard-edged, jagged lines have a staccato visual movement while organic, flowing lines create a more than comfortable feeling. Meandering lines tin exist either geometric or expressive, and you tin can come across in the examples how their indeterminate paths animate a surface to unlike degrees.

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

Although line every bit a visual element mostly plays a supporting role in visual art, there are wonderful examples in which line carries a strong cultural significance every bit the primary subject matter.

Calligraphic lines utilize quickness and gesture, more akin to paint strokes, to imbue an artwork with a fluid, lyrical graphic symbol. To see this unique line quality, look up the piece of work of Chinese poet and artist Dong Qichang, dating from the Ming dynasty (1555-1637). A more geometric instance from the Koran, created in the Arabic calligraphic style, dates from the 9^th century.

Both these examples bear witness how artists apply line as both a form of writing and a visual art form. American artist Marker Tobey (1890–1976) was influenced past Oriental calligraphy, adapting its course to the human action of pure painting within a modern abstract style described equally white writing.

two. Shape

A shape is defined as an enclosed area in two dimensions. Past definition shapes are e'er flat, simply the combination of shapes, color, and other ways tin make shapes announced three-dimensional, equally forms. Shapes can be created in many ways, the simplest by enclosing an surface area with an outline. They can also be made by surrounding an surface area with other shapes or the placement of different textures next to each other—for instance, the shape of an island surrounded by water. Because they are more complex than lines, shapes are usually more important in the arrangement of compositions. The examples beneath give us an thought of how shapes are fabricated.

Referring back to Velazquez'southward Las Meninas, it is fundamentally an arrangement of shapes; organic and hard-edged, light, dark and mid-toned, that solidifies the limerick inside the larger shape of the canvas. Looking at it this way, nosotros tin can view any piece of work of art, whether two or three-dimensional, realistic, abstruse or non-objective, in terms of shapes solitary.

Geometric Shapes vs. Organic Shapes

Shapes tin can be further categorized into geometric and organic. Examples of geometric shapes are the ones nosotros can recognize and proper name: squares, triangles, circles, hexagons, etc. Organic shapes are those that are based on organic or living things or are more complimentary form: the shape of a tree, face, monkey, deject, etc.

3. Form

Class is sometimes used to depict a shape that has an implied third dimension. In other words, an artist may try to make parts of a apartment image announced 3-dimensional. Notice in the drawing below how the artist makes the different shapes appear three-dimensional through the use of shading. It's a flat prototype but appears three-dimensional. Course is used to make people, animals, trees, or anything appear 3-dimensional.

This paradigm is free of copyright restrictions.

When an epitome is incredibly realistic in terms of its forms (too every bit color, space, etc.) such as this painting past Edwaert Collier, we call that trompe fifty'oeil, French for "fool the eye."

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

four. Space

Space is the surface area surrounding or betwixt real or implied objects. Humans categorize space: at that place is outer infinite, that limitless void we enter beyond our sky; inner infinite, which resides in people'due south minds and imaginations, and personal space, the important but intangible expanse that surrounds each individual and which is violated if someone else gets also close. Pictorial infinite is flat, and the digital realm resides in cyberspace. Art responds to all of these kinds of infinite.

Many artists are every bit concerned with space in their works every bit they are with, say, color or form. There are many means for the artist to present ideas of infinite. Remember that many cultures traditionally use pictorial space equally a window to view bailiwick matter through, and through the subject affair they nowadays 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 signal(s) . You can run into how 1-point linear perspective is set up in the examples below:

One-Point Linear Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

One-point perspective occurs when the receding lines announced to converge at a unmarried point on the horizon and used when the apartment forepart of an object is facing the viewer. Note: Perspective tin be used to evidence the relative size and recession into space of whatever object, merely is virtually effective with hard-edged three-dimensional objects such every bit buildings.

A classic Renaissance artwork using one signal perspective is Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper from 1498. Da Vinci composes the work past locating the vanishing point directly behind the caput of Christ, thus cartoon the viewer'due south attending to the centre. His artillery mirror the receding wall lines, and, if we follow them as lines, would converge at the same vanishing point.

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

Two-point perspective occurs when the vertical border of a cube is facing the viewer, exposing two sides that recede into the distance, one to each vanishing indicate.

2-Point Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

View Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Weather from 1877 to see how two-point perspective is used to give an accurate view to an urban scene.  The artist's composition, however, is more complex than just his apply of perspective. The figures are deliberately placed to direct the viewer's center from the front end right of the flick to the building's front edge on the left, which, like a ship'southward bow, acts every bit a cleaver to plunge both sides toward the horizon. In the midst of this visual recession a lamp mail stands firmly in the heart to arrest our gaze from going right out the back of the painting. Caillebotte includes the little metallic arm at the summit right of the post to direct us again along a horizontal path, at present keeping us from traveling off the top of the canvas. As relatively spare every bit the left side of the work is, the artist crams the right side with hard-edged and organic shapes and forms in a circuitous play of positive and negative space.

The perspective organization is a cultural convention well suited to a traditional western European idea of the "truth," that is, an authentic, clear rendition of observed reality. Fifty-fifty later on the invention of linear perspective, many artists and cultures continued to use other means to show pictorial space, relying on overlapping, size differences (smaller=further), vertical placement (lower=closer; higher=further), aeriform or atmospheric perspective (hazy, less detailed-further; articulate, well-baked, detailed=closer). THESE ARE Of import!  Make SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY MEAN.

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. Information technology's composed from a number of different vantage points (as opposed to vanishing points), all very flat to the picture airplane. While the overall image is seen from above, the figures and trees appear as cutouts, seeming to float in mid air. Find the towers on the far left and right are sideways to the picture airplane. The trees and people occupying the upper parts are meant to be perceived as further from the viewer every bit compared to those copse, buildings and people located nearly the bottom of the painting. This is an example of vertical placement.

Every bit "wrong" as it looks, the painting does requite a detailed description of the landscape and structures on the palace grounds.

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

Later on nearly five hundred years using linear perspective, western ideas near how space is depicted accurately in 2 dimensions went through a revolution at the beginning of the 20^th century. A immature Castilian artist, Pablo Picasso, moved to Paris, and then western culture'due south capital of fine art, and largely reinvented pictorial infinite with the invention of Cubism, ushered in dramatically past his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. He was influenced in office past the chiseled forms, angular surfaces and disproportion of African sculpture (refer back to the Male person Figurefrom Cameroon) and mask-similar faces of early on Iberian artworks. For more information most this important 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 plane to carry and animate traditional subject matter including figures, still life and landscape. Cubist pictures, and somewhen sculptures, became amalgams of unlike points of view, light sources and planar constructs. It was as if they were presenting their subject affair in many ways at in one case, all the while shifting foreground, middle ground and groundwork so the viewer is non sure where one starts and the other ends. In an interview, the artist explained cubism this way: "The problem is at present to pass, to go around the object, and give a plastic expression to the result. All of this is my struggle to interruption with the ii-dimensional aspect*"(from Alexander Liberman, An Artist in His Studio, 1960, folio 113). Public and critical reaction to cubism was understandably negative, merely the artists' experiments with spatial relationships reverberated with others and became – along with new means of using color – a driving force in the evolution of a modern fine art motility that based itself on the flatness of the picture plane. Instead of a window to wait into, the flat surface becomes a ground on which to construct formal arrangements of shapes, colors and compositions. For another perspective on this idea, refer back to module ane's discussion of 'abstraction'.

You can run into the radical changes cubism made in George Braque's mural La Roche Guyonfrom 1909. The copse, houses, castle and surrounding rocks incorporate almost a single complex course, stair-stepping upwards the canvas to mimic the distant hill at the superlative, all of information technology struggling upwards and leaning to the right inside 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

As the cubist manner developed, its forms became fifty-fifty flatter. Juan Gris's The Sunblindfrom 1914 splays the still life it represents beyond the canvass. Collage elements like newspaper reinforce pictorial flatness.

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

Information technology's not so difficult to understand the importance of this new idea of space 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 flight in 1903, the same year 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 listen and its effect on behavior were published in 1902, and Albert Einstein's calculations on relativity, the idea that space and time are intertwined, first appeared in 1905. Each of these discoveries added to human understanding and realligned the style we look at ourselves and our world. Indeed, Picasso, speaking of his struggle to define cubism, said "Fifty-fifty Einstein did not know it either! The condition of discovery is outside ourselves; just the terrifying thing is that despite all this, nosotros can simply find what we know" (from Picasso on Art, A Selection of Views past Dore Ashton, (Souchere, 1960, page 15).

5. Value and Dissimilarity

Value (or tone) is the relative lightness or darkness of a shape in relation to another. The value scale, divisional on one terminate by pure white and on the other by black, and in between a series of progressively darker shades of grey, gives an artist the tools to make these transformations. The value scale below shows the standard variations in tones. Values near the lighter stop of the spectrum are termed loftier-keyed, those on the darker end are low-keyed.

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

In two dimensions, the use 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 effect value has on changing a shape to a form.

2D Form, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC By

3D Form, eleven July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC Past

This same technique brings to life what begins equally a elementary line drawing of a immature man'due south head in Michelangelo's Caput of a Youth and a Correct Paw from 1508. Shading is created with line (refer to our discussion of line earlier in this module) or tones created with a pencil. Artists vary the tones past the amount of resistance they use betwixt the pencil and the paper they're drawing on. A cartoon pencil's leads vary in hardness, each i giving a unlike tone than another. Washes of ink or color create values determined past the corporeality of water the medium is dissolved into.

The use of high dissimilarity, placing lighter areas of value confronting much darker ones, creates a dramatic effect, while low dissimilarity gives more subtle results. These differences in outcome are axiomatic in 'Guiditta and Oloferne' by the Italian painter Caravaggio, and Robert Adams' photograph Untitled, Denver from 1970-74. Caravaggio uses a high dissimilarity 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 figure on the bicycle.

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

6. Colour

Colour is the most complex artistic chemical 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 requite desired direction to their work.

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

The total spectrum of colors is contained in white lite. Humans perceive colors from the calorie-free reflected off objects. A ruby object, for case, looks red because it reflects the red role of the spectrum. It would exist a different color under a different light. Color theory first appeared in the 17^th century when English mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white light could be divided into a spectrum by passing it through a prism.

The study of color in fine art and design often starts with colour theory. Color theory splits up colors into three categories: principal, secondary, and 3rd.

The basic tool used is a color cycle, adult past Isaac Newton in 1666. A more complex model known as the color tree, created by Albert Munsell, shows the spectrum made up of sets of tints and shades on continued planes.

At that place are a number of approaches to organizing colors into meaningful relationships. Most systems differ in structure but.

Traditional Model

Traditional color theory is a qualitative endeavour to organize colors and their relationships. It is based on Newton's color cycle, and continues to exist the most mutual system used by artists.

Blue Yellow Reddish Color Wheel. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

Traditional color theory uses the same principles every bit subtractive color mixing (see below) merely prefers different master colors.

• The chief colors are crimson, blue, and yellow. Yous find 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 yellowish), green (mix of blueish and yellow), and violet (mix of blue and red).
• The tertiary colors are obtained by mixing one primary colour and one secondary color. Depending on amount of colour used, different hues tin be obtained such as ruddy-orange or yellow-green. Neutral colors (browns and grays) can be mixed using the three primary colors together.
• White and black lie outside of these categories. They are used to lighten or darken a color. A lighter color (made by adding white to it) is chosen a tint , while a darker color (made by calculation black) is called a shade .

Color Mixing

Retrieve virtually color as the result of light reflecting off a surface. Understood in this way, color can be represented as a ratio of amounts of primary color mixed together. Color is produced when parts of the external light source's spectrum are absorbed past the material and non reflected back to the viewer's middle. For instance, a painter brushes blue paint onto a canvas. The chemic limerick of the paint allows all of the colors in the spectrum to be captivated except blue, which is reflected from the pigment'southward surface.  Common applications of subtractive color theory are used in the visual arts, color printing and processing photographic positives and negatives.

• The primary colors are reddish, xanthous, and blue.
• The secondary colors are orange, green and violet.
• The tertiary colors are created by mixing a master with a secondary color.
• Black is mixed using the three primary colors, while white represents the absence of all colors. Note: considering of impurities in subtractive colour, a true black is impossible to create through the mixture of primaries. Considering of this the result is closer to brown. Similar to additive color theory, lightness and darkness of a color is adamant past 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 nosotros perceive it.

• Hue refers to color itself, but also to the variations of a color.
• Value (equally discussed previously) refers to the relative lightness or darkness of one color next to another. The value of a colour can make a difference in how information technology is perceived. A color on a nighttime background volition appear lighter, while that same color on a light background will announced darker.
• Saturation refers to the purity and intensity of a color. The primaries are the most intense and pure, but diminish equally they are mixed to form other colors. The cosmos of tints and shades too diminish a color'due south saturation. 2 colors work strongest together when they share the same intensity.

Color Interactions

Beyond creating a mixing hierarchy, color theory besides provides tools for understanding how colors work together.

Monochrome

The simplest colour interaction is monochrome. This is the use of variations of a unmarried hue. The advantage of using a monochromatic colour scheme is that y'all go a high level of unity throughout the artwork because all the tones relate to ane some other. See this in Mark Tansey'southward Derrida Queries de Human being from 1990.

Analogous Color

Analogous colors are like to 1 another. As their name implies, analogous colors tin can exist found side by side to one another on whatsoever 12-function color bike:

Analogous Color, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

Y'all can 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 bike is divided into warm and absurd colors. Warm colors range from yellow to red, while cool colors range from yellowish-dark-green to violet.  You tin can reach complex results using merely a few colors when you pair them in warm and absurd sets.

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

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are found straight contrary 1 another on a color wheel. Here are some examples:

• purple and yellowish
• green and cherry-red
• orangish and blue

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

Blue and orange are complements. When placed nearly each other, complements create a visual tension. This color scheme is desirable when a dramatic effect is needed using only 2 colors.

vii. Texture

At the most basic level, Three-dimensional works of art (sculpture, pottery, textiles, metalwork, etc.) and compages accept actual texture which is frequently determined by the fabric that was used to create it: wood, stone, bronze, clay, etc. Two-dimensional works of art similar paintings, drawings, and prints may try to show implied 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, nosotros call that impasto.

The first image below is a sculpture, and like all iii-dimensional objects it has actual texture.

The next two images are details from the painting The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck. Here, the artist has created implied texture. If you were to affect this painting you would not feel the fabric of the clothing and carpet, the wooden flooring or the shine metal of the chandelier, but our eyes "see" the texture.

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