Pictorial Space: Instant Art Appreciation Lesson
Expanded Vocabulary for ARTS 1020
An effective image (or sequence of images as in film and video) is a composition. A composer of music arranges notes of a particular duration along a time line. A composer of visual communication arranges visual elements within a frame. The frame is the single most dominant feature of any picture. The placement of visual elements according to common principles in relationship to the frame is the art of visual composition.
For more information and examples of the concepts defined here, please visit the following web sites.· ART, DESIGN, & VISUAL THINKING
o http://char.txa.cornell.edu/
· Historical and Cultural Context -Andy Goldsworthy - Beneath the Surface Appearance
o http://www.writedesignonline.com/history-culture/AndyGoldsworthy/overview.htm
· ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
o http://www.wiu.edu/art/courses/design/intro.htm
· MORE ELEMENTS & PRINCIPLES
o http://www.4h.uidaho.edu/programs/kidspace/E-P.htm
· VISUAL LITERACY – THE ELEMENTS & PRINCIPLES
o http://www.educ.kent.edu/community/VLO/design/index.html
UNIT I (for test #1)
1. Visual Elements
The elements are defined as the stuff out of which a work of visual communication is constructed. Just as chemical elements are the building blocks of the world, there are only a few elements but an infinite number of possible combinations.
Point:
Points are abrupt terminations of an observer’s attention. A point could be a dot, the narrow end of something or the place where two lines converge.
Line:
If it’s longer than it is wide, it’s a line. In visual terms a line is a color edge. It’s an area where a continuous area of color is sharply delineated from another over a distance. Does that mean that a pencil line is not one line but two because each side of the black part meets the white of the paper at a different place? Or you may ask, “At what point does a fat line become a shape?” Don’t worry about it. This isn’t science. It’s art. A line is what you think it is. The practiced touch of an artist on a drawing gives the composition a line quality that is comparable to the notes played by a skilled guitarist. Quality guitar playing is not just getting the notes in the right order. It’s doing it with feeling.
Form and shape are areas or masses which define objects in space. Form and shape imply space; indeed they cannot exist without space.
There are various ways to categorize form and shape. Form and shape can be thought of as either two dimensional or three dimensional. Two dimensional form has width and height. It can also create the illusion of three dimension objects. Three dimensional shape has depth as well as width and height.
Space - The emptiness or area between, around, above, below, or contained within objects. Shapes and forms are defined by the space around and within them, just as spaces are defined by the shapes and forms around and within them.
Value:
Value is more difficult because the word is not used in the ordinary sense. It does not refer to the quality of the work or how much it costs. Value refers to relationships of light and dark irrespective of color. A black and white photograph shows the subject in value only. Dark colors against light colors would be said to be high contrast value. High contrast conveys more emotion. Lower contrast appears restful. Chiaroscuro is a word that refers to shaping of values for dramatic effect.
Color:
The word color is the general term that applies to the whole subject - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, black and white and all possible combinations thereof. Hue is the correct word to use to refer to just the pure spectrum colors. Any given color can be described in terms of its value and hue.
Movement
Movement is the design element that operates in the fourth dimension - time. Movement is the process of relocation of objects in space over time. We can speak of movement as literal or compositional.
The physical fact of movement is part of certain designed objects; we are speaking here of literal movement.
Texture:
Texture is the quality of an object which we sense through touch. It exists as a literal surface we can feel, but also as a surface we can see, and imagine the sensation might have if we felt it. Texture can also be portrayed in an image, suggested to the eye which can refer to our memories of surfaces we have touched. So a texture can be imaginary.
2. Miscellaneous
Meaning:
Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance. Something that one wishes to convey, especially by language: The writer's meaning was obscured by his convoluted prose.
Representational or descriptive shapes:
derived from specific subject matter and are strongly based on perceptual reality.
Nonobjective:
shapes such as circles, squares, and triangles are pure forms created without reference to specific subject matter.
Abstract
shapes derived from a visual source, but are so transformed that hey bear little resemblance to the original form.
3. Subject Matter
Figure - A painting or drawing that pictures human or other living forms.
Portrait - A painting or drawing of a specific individual, intended to record a likeness of the person and often insight into physical, biographical and or psychological aspects of the person.
Landscape - A painting or drawing of an outdoor scene.
Still life:
A painting, or drawing of a group, of inanimate objects contrived by the artist according to a theme, (symbolic or aesthetic).
Interior - A painting or drawing of an interior space, such as the inside of a room.
Pictorial form - A non-objective painting or drawing. In other words, no recognizable subject matter is pictured. A composition of lines, shapes, textures and forms with no intention of representing reality of the visual world we live in.
UNIT II (for test #2)
4. Camera Angles:
Long Shot
A picture that shows something at great distance and takes in all of the objects and the surrounding landscape.
Full Shot
A picture that includes all of a figure from head to toe.
Medium Shot
A picture that shows a figure from the waist up or similar.
Close-up
A zoomed-in view that might focus on part of a figure, for example the face of a person.
Extreme Close-up
A picture which is more zoomed-in than a close-up, for example an eye.
5. Principles of Design
Emphasis:
Emphasis is also referred to as point of focus, or interruption. It marks the locations in a composition which most strongly draw the viewers attention. Usually there is a primary, or main, point of emphasis, with perhaps secondary emphases in other parts of the composition. The emphasis is usually an interruption in the fundamental pattern or movement of the viewers eye through the composition, or a break in the rhythm.
Unity:
The decisions that the creator of a work of visual communication makes to shape and limit the elements gives it unity. Everything can’t coexist effectively with everything else. The range of possibilities has to be narrowed.
Variety:
A work with excessive unity is boring. A painting of one color (and there are such things in the universe of modern art) would have a high degree of unity but little communicative value. Modern minimal art is accompanied by a load of art history and critical theory to make it conceptually interesting. God visual communication depends on the skill of the creator to subtly vary the elements within the limitations of an overall design scheme.
Rhythm:
Rhythm is patterned repetition in time. In music, film or video, events unfolding in time may be marked by regularly recurring distinctive elements that catch the audience’s attention. The repetition sets up expectations that create a sense of forward movement. In still images the picture is not moving in time but the audience is. Patterned elements move the eye of the observer in directions determined by the artist.
Balance:
Balance is an acknowledgement that the work of visual communication and the observer are in the same gravitational field. Our sense of up and down is an intuition of our relationship to planetary forces. An image is observed as if a fulcrum were placed at the bottom with elements to the right and left balanced or unbalanced according to their visual “weight.” All other things being equal, large objects are heavier than small objects. Dark objects are heavier than light objects. Objects with saturated colors are heavier. High contrast value is heavier. Complementary colors in proximity are heavier than analogous colors. Dense textures may be visually heavy but smooth textures could remind the observer of stone or steel and be seen as heavier. Balance may also be achieved
6. Illusionist Devices
The painters of the Renaissance developed systematic methods for depicting three-dimensional space on a two dimensional surface.
Linear (or Vanishing Point) Perspective:
Things in the distance are smaller and higher in the visual field. Renaissance painters were the first to realize that things get smaller in a mathematically predictable way. Lines of a building that are parallel to one another appear to be converging when turned away from a viewer and seen along the side. Parallel railroad tracks proceeding across the prairie away from a viewer will appear to get closer and closer together until they meet and vanish (thus vanishing point) at the horizon.
Visual Perspective:
Things that are in front block the view ot things behind. Therefore shapes on a two dimensional surface that overlap other shapes will appear to be in front.
Atmospheric Perspective:
Things in the distance are less distinct and bluer than things up close due to the intervention of the atmosphere. Light shining through a lot of air is bent into the blue range.
Chiaroscuro:
Light falling on a three dimensional object is shadowed by the object on the side away from the light source. Gradations of light and dark may be used to depict the effect of light in three-dimensional space.
UNIT 3 (for Test #3 ) coming soon…