GHP Visual Arts

Design Principles

Refers to the ways artists organize the visual elements of art: generally found to include balance, emphasis, contrast, unity, movement and rhythm. May also include: proportion, scale, repetition, pattern, and variety.

Line

A visual element that is the path of a moving point through space. It has the properties of direction, width and length.

Form

The visual element that is three-dimensional; having height, width and depth.

Color

A visual element that refers to what the eyes see when light is reflected off an object. Hue, value and intensity are three properties.

Value

The visual element that refers to lightness and darkness.

Texture

The visual element that refers to the way something feels or looks like it feels and can be actual or implied.

Space

The visual element that refers to the area between, around, above, below and within objects.

Emphasis

A principle of art that stresses one element of art, defines a center of interest or draws attention to certain areas with a work of art.

Proportion

A principle of art concerned with the relationships in size, one part to another or to the whole.

Unity

A principle of art that is concerned with the sense of wholeness or completeness.

Movement

A principle of art used to guide a viewer's eye throughout the work; a trend.

Rhythm

A principle of art in which the appearance of movement is created by the recurrence of elements.

Contrast

A principle of art that uses the differences between the visual elements to create variety, emphasis or interest. \_____ in value is the difference between light and dark.

Pattern

Repetition of elements or motif.

Scale

When proportional relationships are created relative to a specific unit of measurement.

Variety

A principle of art through which different elements are used to add visual interest.

Formal Balance

When a composition is symmetrical, it gives the feeling that the weight is equally distributed, since this is a classical appearance of formality.

Informal Balance

When a composition is asymmetrical, there is a visual emphasis, or pull, to one side of the composition. For example, think about a seesaw or scales.

Vertical Lines

Communicate strength, rigidity, or height. Suggest spirituality, reaching toward sky. Diagonal lines communicate opposition or movement, curves lines communicate sensual or softening quality.

Perspective: Linear

A technique for representing 3-dimensional objects on a flat surface. During the Renaissance, artists invented this technique based upon math principles in order to give paintings a realistic appearance.

Perspective: Atmospheric or Aerial

Used to create depth and dimension. Artists use overlapping, color, size, and contrast to reproduce the effects of distant objects. Darker objects appear to be closer when using lighter and duller for distant objects.

Pencil Shades: Light to Dark

6H, 4H, 2H, HB, 2B, 4B, 6B

Hue

Color

Intensity

Describes the brilliance or dullness of color. For example, brighter colors in a composition are often associated with stronger emotions and heightened energy.

Lightness

The 'blackness' or 'whiteness' of the color. In terms of Color Wheel Pro, black has the lightness of -1, pure hue has the lightness of 0, and white has the lightness of 1:

Saturation

The amount of hue in proportion to the neutral gray of the same lightness, that is the intensity of color.

Shades

Mixtures of a hue and black.

Tones

Mixtures of a hue and its compliment or grays.

Tints

Mixtures of a hue and white.

Primary Colors

Red, Blue, Yellow. Used to make secondary colors.

Secondary Colors

Orange, Green, Violet.

Tertiary Colors

Created by mixing secondary colors and when mixing these colors, the secondary color tends to be muted or grayish to provide a variation of the secondary color.

Complimentary Colors

Colors that sit on opposite ends of the color wheel.

Monochromatic Color

Tints and shades of one color.

Analogous Colors

Colors that are side by side on the color wheel and share a hue.

Split Complimentary Colors

A color scheme using one color with the two colors on either side of its compliment. Forms a triangle on the color wheel.

Double Complimentary Colors / Tetrad Colors / Quadrad Colors

Four colors. one from each side of the two complimentary colors. Forms a rectangle on the color wheel.

Triadic Colors

Three colors on the color wheel in a triangle. Example:Orange, Purple, and Green.

Neutral Color Scheme

Colors not found on the color wheel.

Accented Neutral Color Scheme

A color scheme that includes neutral colors, like white, beige, brown, gray, light brown or black, and one or more small doses of other colors (e.g. brown and beige with blue, gray and black with red).

Warm Colors

Hues red through yellow. Browns and tans included.

Cool Colors

Hues blue through purple. Most grays included.

Classical Art

400 BC - AD 400 Ancient Greece and Rome. Art encompassed; architecture, pottery, painting, frescoes. Physical beauty; mathematical; definite proportion; celebrated great events.

Byzantine Art

400-1400. Eastern Roman Empire; religious imagery; mosaics; icons; elongated bodies; stylized background; gold leaf; mosaics decorated churches; triptych, three panels.

Early Middle Ages Art

500-1000. Greco-Roman influence; influence of religion; sacred art; spatially flat; illustrated Book of Kells. Romanesque architectural style: heavy walls; round, ribbed arches; transept and knave; grand.

Later Middle Ages Art

1000-1400. Gothic art: religious-the Church was almost the sole patron of the arts; spatially flat; shape of human body was used to communicate emotions; manuscript illumination. Gothic architectural style 1200; influenced by Christianity; Age of Chivalry; rapid growth of commerce; flying buttress-towering monuments to God. Frescoes; tempera painting 1400s, with egg tempera as binder; illuminated manuscripts; vegetable oils.

Renaissance Art

1400-1600. Rebirth of Greco-Roman classical forms; development of cities; art patronage: church or court. Humanism; sculpture; art and architecture, Sistine Chapel-perspective; anatomy; emotion; oil painting techniques. Art influenced by religion; Raphael-unity of subject style, and technique; New technology; printing press; use of oils-lasting; landscapes. Drawings. Artists: Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, and Donatello.

Baroque Art

1600-1750. Foundations in Italy and Germany: influenced by Scientific Revolution; Newton, Galileo; Age of Enlightenment; Counter-Reformation against Protestantism-paintings of faith,martyrdom; Age of Absolute Monarchs. Complex style; appeal to senses, spectator involvement, drama; strong emotion; emphasis on depth, space; genre scenes; movement with grandeur. Artists: Rembrant.

Post Impressionist Art

1880s-1900s. Paint indoors or outside; emotions through the use of color, swirling color, thick applications; complementary colors; new subject matter: away from the narrow spectrum of viewing. They reacted against the naturalism of the impressionists to explore color, line, and form, and the emotional response of the artist, a concern that led to the development of expressionism. Artists: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne.

Twentieth Century Art

Influenced by technology of early twentieth century; expansion of color-right from the tube in assertive brush strokes; discord of color; non-Western themes. Cubism: fragmentation of form; influenced by African tribal arts; masks and sculpture; move toward abstract art.

Four Parts of Art Criticism

Description, analysis, interpretation, and judgement.

Diptych

A picture with two panels, usually together.

Triptych

A picture that has three panels placed next to each other.

Balance

A principle of art that is concerned with the sense of stability of the visual elements. There are three types of \_____ : symmetrical, asymmetrical and radial.

Art Movements

Mid ages, gothic, renaissance, baroque, neoclassicism, naturalism, romanticism, realism, impressionism, post impressionism, art nouveau, expressionism, fauvism, cubism, futurism, dada, surrealism, pop art.

Impressionism

This movement was the product of art critics and members of high society scrutinizing many new artists about what they could paint. Influenced by science; concern for light and color on object. Experience of the fleeting moment; new techniques allowed for painting outside; rejected themes of the French Salon; emphasis on primary colors and small brush strokes; side-by-side placement of primary color; little white or black.

Expressionism

A modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.

Art Nouveau

A style of decorative art, architecture, and design prominent in western Europe and the US from about 1890 until World War I and characterized by intricate linear designs and flowing curves based on natural forms.

Cubism

An early 20th-century style and movement in art, especially painting, in which perspective with a single viewpoint was abandoned and use was made of simple geometric shapes, interlocking planes, and, later, collage Artists: Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.

Naturalism

Depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. An important part of this movement was its Darwinian perspective of life and its view of man against the forces of nature.

Romanticism

Partly as a reaction to the industrial revolution, this movement was against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

Art Deco

A decorative and architectural style of the period 1925-1940, characterized by geometric designs, bold colors, and the use of plastics and glass.

Dada

A European artistic and literary movement from 1916-1923 that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity. Artists: Salvador Dali.

Harlem Renaissance

A blossoming from 1918-1937 of African American Culture, particularly in the creative arts, centered in Harlem in New York City.

Depth of Field

Area in a photograph from the nearest point in focus to the farthest point in focus.

Chiaroscuro

The use of light and shadow to create a focal point or mood.

Putto (plural Putti)

(Chubby little babies). A figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually nude and sometimes winged

Fresco

Method for painting indoor murals, involves putting pigments on lime plaster.

Impasto

Thick layers/strokes of oil paint so they stick out from surface.

Veduta

The painting of landscapes.

Tempera Paint

Made of egg.

Contemporary Art

Art produced in the second half of the twentieth century.

Eclecticism

The borrowing of a variety of styles from different sources and combining them.

Maquette

A small three-dimensional model for a larger piece of sculpture.

Polychrome

Multicolored.

Bleeding

The tendency for some colors to show through a second layer of paint.

Armature

A base made of wire, iron, cardboard, or sticks for supporting modeling clay.

Raku

A low fire often done outdoors that produces dark areas and iridescence.

Turning

Completing a piece of ware by rotating on a wheel and trimming with tools.

Wax Resist

The application of melted wax to the foot or body of a clay object to resist the glaze.

Glaze

A mixture of powdered materials that often includes a premelted glass made into a slip and applied to a ceramic body by spraying or dipping and capable of fusing to glassy coating when dried and fired; cone 06.

Bas Relief

Sculpture in which figures are carved from a flat surface so that the project only a little from the background.

Trump L'oeil

A style of painting that gives an illusion of photographic reality.

Wedging

A method of removing air from clay; rolling and kneading.

Throw

To form articles on a rotating potter's wheel.

Body

Clay or mixtures of clay used to make pottery.

Atmosphere level

Clay dried out of all non-chemically combined water and ready for firing.

Centering

Getting the clay in the exact middle of the wheel head when throwing or trimming.

Casting

Producing pots from plaster molds.

Raw Clay

Wet clay which has no yet been processed or fried.

Leather Hard

Stage of the clay between plastic and bone dry.

Bone Dry

Completely air dried.

Bisque

Refers to ware which has been fired once and has no chemically bonded water left in the clay; cone 04-06.

Greenware

Unfired pottery. At this stage, it can either be fired, joined to more clay (and then fired) or re-wetted and deformed. Ready to be bisque fired.

Three chemicals used in printing black and white photographs.

Dektol, stop bath, and fixer.

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch. 1893. Expressionism

"David" of Florence by Michelangelo. 1501. Italian Renaissance.

"American Gothic" by Grant Wood. 1930. Modernism/Regionalism.

Howard Finster

Considered folk art or outsider art. 1990s. Georgia. Paradise Garden.

What inspired Picasso's "Guernica"?

The bombing of Guerncia by German planes during the Spanish Civil War.