Chapter 1 Art Appreciation

1.1 What is art appreciation

Appreciation of the visual arts goes beyond staring at a painting hanging on the wall of a museum—art is in everything and everywhere you look. Opening your eyes to the world of art is essential in understanding the world around you. Art is more than pretentious museums; only a few enter and comprehend. Instead, art appreciation is:

• Gaining the knowledge to understand the art.

• Acquire the art methods and materials to discuss art verbally or by the written word.

• Ability to identify the movements from ancient cultures to today's contemporary art.

Learning how to appreciate art is a necessary cultural foundation enabling people to critically analyze art, art forms, and how cultures used art. All it takes to understand the art is just to look!

Art appreciation centers on the ability to view art throughout history, focusing on the cultures and the people, and how art developed in the specific periods. It is difficult to understand art without understanding the culture, their use of materials, and a sense of beauty. Art is conveyed by the simple act of creating art for art's sake. Every person is born with the innate desire to create art, and similar to other professions, training is essential in honing skills to produce art. Art education broadens a person's comprehension, development, and visions of art. Art brings an understanding of diversity, how people lived in the past, and connects the issues concerning contemporary life and art today.

The history of the world is similarly the history of art, continually intertwined. For millions of years, as humans roamed the earth, evolution, and environment shaped many different cultures depending on location, weather, natural resources, and food. These cultures formed the foundation of all art today. Art appreciation analyzes art using the methods and materials, allowing people to make connections to the context of art and the interactions of societies.

It is difficult to understand the art without understanding the culture.

1.2: Art of the Past and the Origins of Creativity

A common saying is, 'history always repeats itself'. Art history and art movements also repeat; artists are influenced by the past and present; the Romans copied the Greeks, and earlier styles inspired art movements. The early Cycladic (1.2) carved simple forms with static arms and legs, David (1.3) by Michelangelo uses contrapposto positioning and realistic details, and the yellow modern art sculpture (1.4) is free form yet based upon a human figure and the interpretation in different millennia, referred to as 'artistic' recurrence.

Artists get their ideas from many places, have you ever wondered where? Why are they creating art, and what is the driving force behind their creation? Is it political, sacred, dreamscape, ceremonial, cultural, expression, therapy, illustrative, historical, literature, poetry, musical, theatrical, nature, narrative, exposing, thought-provoking, or experimental, whatever it is, it must come from within the artist. The process is part of the journey, and the journey is the process. If a mistake happens, paint over it. There is no such thing as a mistake in art; it is just not finished. Art is only complete when the artist believes it is finished!

Over 4 million years, humans evolved into the unique Homo Sapiens—modern human brains have increased in size leading to creative and organized groups of prehistoric people. The discovery of fire was perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the Stone Age, and scholarly evidence supports the practice of fire around 400,000 years ago, although some scholars believe it might have been much earlier. The human brain divided between the humanities and science began to evolve as complementary divisions eons ago. Fire is at the heart of our creativity.

Everyone loves a campfire; it brings people together when the skies darken, and long nights ensue. Research indicates that adding protein to a diet allowed the brain to increase in size. Protein, an essential element for the evolution of the human brain, fire likewise allowed the cooking of protein, eliminating the restriction of raw foods. This increase of protein in the prehistoric diet lead to the development of a larger front lobe brain creating more empathy, problem-solving, and social intelligence. Did the stories told around the chiaroscuro firelight, with singing, dancing, and chanting, lead to drawing on the walls of caves or rock outcrops, recording their epic hunts or daily lives? The unification of small nomadic groups of people required rules and regulations which may have begun around the campfire.

According to carbon dating methods, the earliest known artwork is 30,000 years old (Venus of Willendorf 1.7) and associated with those who created cave art. Previously, anthropologists considered Mesopotamia as the "Cradle of Civilization" home to the oldest culture in the world. Cultural anthropologists have defined the Cradle of Civilization to signify the period of written language, agriculture, raising animals, and public buildings. This list was used by most cultures and now defines Ancient Egypt along the Nile, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Ancient China in the Yellow River region, the Central Andes and Mesoamerica as centers where different civilizations started independently.

Creativity continued to grow among cultures, and depending on the natural resources, grand palaces, tombs, and structures rose out of the earth. Art appreciation usually focuses on Egypt, Greek, Roman,Renaissance, and modern art. This textbook covers cultures well beyond classical art and delves into the numerous societies of people and their culture from the six continents. Exploring art outside the norm, understand the origins of creativity, and how it connects the art of the past in all cultures across the world is critical in art appreciation.

1.3 What are BCE and CE

Over time, ancient civilizations calculated and wrote about the passing of time differently than we do today. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, they based the calendar upon the king, or the seasons set by their various gods. In Rome, time was counted from the founding of Rome and changed periodically by rulers. In Mesoamerica, the Aztec Calendar (1.8) was the system used by the Pre-Columbian people, a 365-day calendar defining a century as 52 years long and based on the sun, a sacred symbol. Since time was established thousands of years ago by many different cultures, one system was not in use.

In the 6th century, Dionysius Exiguus, who was a Christian monk, established the Anno Domino (AD) and Before Christ (BC) as the reference date for the year zero in Europe based on the tenets of Christianity. Other religions also developed their calendars, and some are still in use today. The scholarly alternative to the current Christian designations for time is named Before the Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE) and has been adopted by academic and scientific publications and studies to emphasize secularism and inclusiveness. The new designation removed the specific religious designation from the calendar; instead, the new naming convention is more meaningful across the globe.

Scholars have readily adopted the new BCE/CE designation for communication and modernizing a worldwide standard. Many cultures today use a dual calendar designation, the BCE/CE standard, and their historical calendars. This textbook uses BCE and CE as a contemporary designation for all cultures around the world. For example, if art were discussed from Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, it would state "in Mesopotamia, 3,000 BCE…". If discussing Gothic art, it would state "Gothicart, 1342 CE, the architectural style…". Using BCE for all dates to the year zero, and CE for all the dates after year zero is a simple clarification.

All dates, regardless of calendars, are based upon estimations since no one is sure when the year zero started. We are into the 2020th year now and cannot change the system to begin at a new date, and it would cause chaos in the computer systems. Year 2K was enough of a coding problem just moving from the 1900s to 2000, let alone moving the world to a new date.

1.5 How to compare and contrast art

Comparing modern paintings and historic paintings brings an understanding of how the past influences the present. Learning the elements of art, design, and art methods will help you communicate and write with a new language to compare and contrast art. In this textbook, we will be comparing and contrasting ordinary images of horses, figures, sunflowers, and dots. Like a new language, it becomes more familiar the more the terms used in written descriptions. Looking at art is the foundation of learning how to write descriptive essays. The longer you look, the more information you begin to see, like the brush marks. Asking yourself questions about the brush marks can help you define the type of art you are looking at:

Impressionism

uses significant broad-brush marks with visible slabs of paint. While

Renaissance

artists used oil paint with almost hidden brush marks giving a life-like look to the painting. These observations will help you decide what period of art painting can belong in when you do not know the answer.

Comparing Horses

The two paintings, Relay Hunting (1.9) and Foundation Sire (1.10) were created 170 years apart yet are as realistic as photographs taken yesterday. Similar instances, the horses predominantly face away from the viewer displaying the sturdy hind legs and taut muscles. The shining sun marks their coats, reflecting highlights and emphasizing the muscle structure of the animals. Both artists realistically depict the horses causing the viewer to take a second look at the exquisite details of the horses and the surroundings.

In realistic paintings, both artists focused on detail based upon their study of horse anatomy. Rosa Bonheur, who painted the three horses in Relay Hunting (1.9), actually went to meat processing plants and studied the anatomy of the horses while she dissected the animals. Most artists study human anatomy as part of their education. Understanding the body's muscle and bone structure benefits the artists' ability to draw realistic people and animals.

The representation of horses throughout human time began on the cave wall, Image of Horse (1.11). We see horses immortalized in bronze statues, captured on film, or drawn in Study of Horses (1.13). Painted in Blue Horses (1.14), etched in Knight, Death and the Devil (1.12), and colored. Horses have been a mode of transportation for thousands of years, and the equine image has been traditional portraiture throughout the ages. These pictures of different types of horses demonstrate they can be drawn or painted in many types of styles. The details in the etched Knight, Death, and the Devil (1.12) establishes the artist as a detail orientated person as opposed to the Blue Horses (1.14), which has a looser painting style and bolder colors.

Comparing Figures

At first glance, The Birth of Venus (1.15) and Rara Avis 19 (1.16) look completely different from each other, or are they? Let us look closer at these two figures—what is the one object in both paintings that is similar? The woman in the center! Both poses are similar, expressionless except what the viewer reads into it, and they display no movement, a very static pose with elongated legs and feet. Neither one of the artists give any weight to the body or use any type of deep perspective space. Both figures have an impossible pose, the shifting of weight over one hip. They both appear to be emerging from the water as if being born from the sea.

They are both colorful and have the impression of a background; land, sea, and trees. However, these two paintings are over 500 years apart, the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli in 1486 and Rara Avis 19 by Jylian Gustlin in 2014. Botticelli painted in oils on canvas, and his Venus is aloof and uninterested in her surroundings. Gustlin works in acrylic and oil paints on board, using the effects of layers to achieve her distinct and intricate paintings. The figures in the landscape frequently show a moody and brooding figure, yet at the same time, depicting a sense of future. One figure set in a literal translation and the other in a modern view, yet each one escapes from reality.

Comparing Sunflowers

These two pieces of art display the gorgeous sunflower at the height of its flowering. The yellow petals open up towards the sunshine, offering seeds to passing birds. The hint of brown color on the leaves tells the viewer that the fall weather is on its way. These two art pieces are about 140 years apart, one is in paint, and the other is painted fabric. The Sunflowers (1.17) in the vase is by Vincent Van Gogh in 1887, and the sunflower quilt (1.18) is by an unknown quilter, 2004.

The two pieces have many similar components, for example, the colors of the sunflowers are yellow, brown seed pods in the centers, both pictures fill the space, and both painted. The differences are more significant because the quilted sunflowers highly contrast against the dark brown fabric; the flowers in the vase are against a pale blue background. The quilt shows flowers arranged in space not anchored to stems or in a vase, as seen in the painting.

The painting process is also different. Van Gogh painted his sunflowers on canvas with oil paints. The painted quilt fabric became the palette for the sunflowers with mostly yellows, with browns, greens, and oranges in a random array of colors for highlights, cut into individual leaves, and arranged on the background fabric. Both pieces are similar works of art created in different periods with different materials.

Comparing Dots

Dots or points are single primary forms in art. In art, dots can be one or many thousands of dots abstracted into images we may or may not recognize. The dots can be far apart or close together, different colors, monochromatic, or one color. All drawings begin with a single dot from the point of the pencil, and as the pencil moves, it becomes a continuous line of dots, thereby making the dot one of the essential elements in art.

Dots become the focal point of the art, and space in-between the dots are as crucial as the dot itself. The dot can cause tension or harmony depending on the color, size, and how close the dot is to another dot. As dots placed closer together, they start to become an object, a recognizable form.

Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) is considered the 'Princess of Polka Dots' using large distinct polka dots in her two sculptures Flowers (1.19) and Life is the Heart of a Rainbow (1.20). They are red and white polka dots surrounding the trees or the entire room. The polka dots are distinctly circles, especially in the room, as they are far apart and only in two contrasting colors. The red wrapped trees with white polka dots are closer together but still distinct in various sizes in the high contrast. The dots are not touching, and the negative space between them is about the same size throughout.

George Seurat developed a technique of painting with tiny colored dots called Pointillism as he when he branched out from Impressionism. Pointillism relies on small dots of color that blend in the viewer's minds creating a large scene. Up close, each colored dot and brush mark are visible; however, when the viewer steps back several feet, the viewer is surprised with a lifelike painting. The large-scale piece,A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte(1.21), transformed art at the turn of the 20th century and inspired artists to work with dots.

The three paintings are all created from dots, small dots, large dots, colored dots on the canvas, on walls, suspended from the ceiling, or suspended in space. The size and color of the dot do matter and can give the viewer a completely different experience.

1.6: What Are the Elements of Art and the Principles of Art?

The visual art terms separate into the elements and principles of art. The elements of art are color, form, line, shape, space, and texture. The principles of art are scale, proportion, unity, variety, rhythm, mass, shape, space, balance, volume, perspective, and depth. In addition to the elements and principles of design, art materials include paint, clay, bronze, pastels, chalk, charcoal, ink, lightening, as some examples. This comprehensive list is for reference and explained in all the chapters. Understanding the art methods will help define and determine how the culture created the art and for what use.

Over the years, art methods have changed; for example, the acrylic paint used today is different from the cave art earth-based paint used 30,000 years ago. People have evolved, discovering new products and procedures for extracting minerals from the earth to produce art products. From the stone age, the bronze, iron age, to the technology age, humans have always sought out new and better inventions. However, access to materials is the most significant advantage for change in civilizations. Almost every civilization had access to clay and was able to manufacture vessels. However, if specific raw materials were only available in one area, the people might trade with others who wanted that resource. For example, on the ancient trade routes, China produced and processed the raw silk into stunning cloth, highly sought out by the Venetians in Italy to make clothing.

The art methods are considered the building blocks for any category of art. When an artist trains in the elements of art, they learn to overlap the elements to create visual components in their art. Methods can be used in isolation or combined into one piece of art (1.24), a combination of line and color. Every piece of art has to contain at least one element of art, and most art pieces have at least two or more.

Elements of Art

Color: Color is the visual perception seen by the human eye. The modern color wheel is designed to explain how color is arraigned and how colors interact with each other. In the center of the color wheel, are the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. The second circle is the secondary colors, which are the two primary colors mixed. Red and blue mixed together form purple, red, and yellow, form orange, and blue and yellow, create green. The outer circle is the tertiary colors, the mixture of a primary color with an adjacent secondary color.

Color contains characteristics, including hue, value, and saturation. Primary hues are also the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. When two primary hues are mixed, they produce secondary hues, which are also the secondary colors: orange, violet, and green. When two colors are combined, they create secondary hues, creating additional secondary hues such as yellow-orange, red-violet, blue-green, blue-violet, yellow-green, and red-orange.

Value: refers to how adding black or white to color changes the shade of the original color, for example, in (1.26). The addition of black or white to one color creates a darker or lighter color giving artists gradations of one color for shading or highlighting in a painting.

Saturation: the intensity of color, and when the color is fully saturated, the color is the purest form or most authentic version. The primary colors are the three fully saturated colors as they are in the purest form. As the saturation decreases, the color begins to look washed out when white or black is added. When a color is bright, it is considered at its highest intensity.

Form: Form gives shape to a piece of art, whether it is the constraints of a line in a painting or the edge of the sculpture. The shape can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional restricted to height and weight, or it can be free-flowing. The form also is the expression of all the formal elements of art in a piece of work.
Line: A line in art is primarily a dot or series of dots. The dots form a line, which can vary in thickness, color, and shape. A line is a two-dimensional shape unless the artist gives it volume or mass. If an artist uses multiple lines, it develops into a drawing more recognizable than a line creating a form resembling the outside of its shape. Lines can also be implied as in an action of the hand pointing up, the viewer's eyes continue upwards without even a real line.

Shape: The shape of the artwork can have many meanings. The shape is defined as having some sort of outline or boundary, whether the shape is two or three dimensional. The shape can be geometric (known shape) or organic (free form shape). Space and shape go together in most artworks.

Space: Space is the area around the focal point of the art piece and might be positive or negative, shallow or deep, open, or closed. Space is the area around the art form; in the case of a building, it is the area behind, over, inside, or next to the structure. The space around a structure or other artwork gives the object its shape. The children are spread across the picture, creating space between each of them, the figures become unique.

Texture: Texture can be rough or smooth to the touch, imitating a particular feel or sensation. The texture is also how your eye perceives a surface, whether it is flat with little texture or displays variations on the surface, imitating rock, wood, stone, fabric. Artists added texture to buildings, landscapes, and portraits with excellent brushwork and layers of paint, giving the illusion of reality.

Principles of Art

Balance: The balance in a piece of art refers to the distribution of weight or the apparent weight of the piece. Arches are built for structural design and to hold the roof in place, allowing for passage of people below the arch and creating balance visually and structurally. It may be the illusion of art that can create balance.

Contrast: Contrast is defined as the difference in colors to create a piece of visual art. For instance, black and white is a known stark contrast and brings vitality to a piece of art, or it can ruin the art with too much contrast. Contrast can also be subtle when using monochromatic colors, giving variety and unity the final piece of art.

Emphasis: Emphasis can be color, unity, balance, or any other principle or element of art used to create a focal point. Artists will use emphasis like placing a string of gold in a field of dark purple. The color contrast between the gold and dark purple causes the gold lettering to pop out, becoming the focal point.

Rhythm/Movement: Rhythm in a piece of art denotes a type of repetition used to either demonstrate movement or expanse. For instance, in a painting of waves crashing, a viewer will automatically see the movement as the wave finishes. The use of bold and directional brushwork will also provide movement in a painting.

Proportion/Scale: Proportion is the relationship between items in a painting, for example, between the sky and mountains. If the sky is more than two-thirds of the painting, it looks out of proportion. The scale in art is similar to proportion, and if something is not to scale, it can look odd. If there is a person in the picture and their hands are too large for their body, then it will look out of scale. Artists can also use scale and proportion to exaggerate people or landscapes to their advantage.

Unity and variety: In art, unity conveys a sense of completeness, pleasure when viewing the art, and cohesiveness to the art, and how the patterns work together brings unity to the picture or object. As the opposite of unity, variety should provoke changes and awareness in the art piece. Colors can provide unity when they are in the same color groups, and a splash of red can provide variety.

Pattern: Pattern is the way something is organized and repeated in its shape or form and can flow without much structure in some random repetition. Patterns might branch out similar to flowers on a plant or form spirals and circles as a group of soap bubbles or seem irregular in the cracked, dry mud. All works of art have some sort of pattern even though it may be hard to discern; the pattern will form by the colors, the illustrations, the shape, or numerous other art methods.

1.4: What is an Artist

An artist is any person from any culture engaged in one or more activities to create art or practice art. Artists do not have to be a professional to design art; most of the time, art is very relaxing and enjoyable, creating sense and meaning in one's life. Artists throughout time were generally called an artisan, a term used for someone who labored with their hands producing art. However, art can be utilitarian, although very beautiful. For example, the pots the Jomon culture produced over 10,000 years ago were very utilitarian, yet they added unusual decorations to the outside of the pots with rope impressions in different patterns.

Art historians have divided art into categories called art movements. A famous art movement known to many is the Renaissance. The Renaissance encompasses the art in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries. The name Renaissance means "Rebirth," and it seemed an appropriate term to describe the dramatic evolution in art. Art movements usually consisted of the same style or philosophy during a period. The movements usually were not named during the time it occurred; later, art historians arbitrarily assigned names based on similar styles and geographical groupings. Art movements have only been classified as movements by the artists or commentators in the last 150 years, beginning with the Impressionists. Most art periods in the last 150 years have been short, around ten years or less, the periods of art before modern art usually lasted 25-50 years.

Not all artists are famous or make a living selling art, but they still create interesting or different art. There are multiple employment opportunities in the art field, for example, teaching, writer, museum curator, art therapists, music, theater, education, and many more. Even the computer industry has designers on staff, so the design of the final product is aesthetically appealing and commercially compelling.

1.7: Art Materials and Methods

Art materials and methods are anything an artist uses to create art in any combination. Materials and methods also can be defined as the process of manufacturing or fabrication of a piece of art such as bronze that need to be melted and poured into a mold to be a finished piece of art. The stone must be quarried, transported, and carved before it can be considered a piece of art. Cotton will be picked, cleaned, wound into thread, dyed, and woven into the fabric before a quilter creates a quilt. Mined minerals are ground, mixed, and put into tubes before an artist creates a painting. Art materials are the tools of an artist. This list is by no means complete; however, it does cover most of the art in this textbook.

Aquatint: Aquatint is used in intaglio printmaking to create marks on the metal plate. The plate and paper press together to create a transfer of ink to paper. An artist uses mordant to etch a plate design, and then rosin is used to create a tonal effect. The tonal variation on the plate is the desired outcome.

Atmospheric perspective: The effect of perspective and distance occurs when the mountains in the background are painted a lighter and grayer color than the mountains in the foreground, a common technique by landscape painters.

Bas-relief: A French word meaning to carve in "low relief" in stone, wood, or rock, which gives the carving a three-dimensional look. The word relief is derived from a Latin verb "relevo" meaning to raise. A sculpture looks like it emerges above the background. However, the artist cuts away the background, adding different degrees of depth to determine how far the sculpted section stands out from the background.

Brick: Brick originated in Mesopotamia around 7500 BCE and is still used today in many shapes, made by mixing earth and water. In other civilizations, bricks were made from mud, loam, sand, and water and were sun-dried to harden.

Brush and ink: Brushes were made from many materials including bamboo, wood, bone, feathers with metal tips to control the flow of ink. Iron gall ink is purple-black and made from tannic acids and iron salts from various vegetables. Dip pens were used to transport the ink from the bottle to the paper for drawing.

Camera: The camera is a visual contraption to record images. The word camera comes from the Latin word 'camera obscura,' which means 'dark chamber.'

Carving: Carvers use a tool to shape material by cutting or scraping sections away from the original form making sculptures of wood, stone, clay, bone, ivory, or any suitable material. Several types of tools are used to carve, and different civilizations developed different tools depending on what natural resources are available.

Chalk: Chalk is very similar to pastels, but instead of grinding the rock into a fine powder, the chalk is in its natural state. Chalk is limestone made about 100 million years ago when it was initially under the sea. Today, chalk is mined from the earth, and the chalk is compacted into cylinder shapes familiar in classrooms today.

Charcoal: Charcoal is a common element throughout human life. Charcoal is the byproduct of burning wood.

Chiaroscuro: Chiaroscuro is the Italian word for "light-dark" and is the use of sharp contrasts between dark and light. The bold contrasts produced a dramatic composition and were used extensively by the Renaissance and Baroque artists. Dark colors made their paintings come to life, and the colors made shadows giving depth to the paintings. Dark colors made their paintings come to life, and the colors made shadows giving depth to the paintings. The deep colors contained more than just black, and the artists combined other colors with black depending on the desired outcomes.

Clay: Over millions of years, the earth's crust has been melted, moved, squeezed, cracked, pounded by weather to create a layer of topsoil with various deposits of rock, and clay. The rivers near the first civilizations cut through the topsoil, exposing the layers of clay and providing easy access to the raw product. The fine particles of silt in the clay give the material its plasticity, and when water is added, it is a cohesive product. Silt consists of feldspar (the most abundant mineral on earth), silica, and alkalis like iron which give clay its reddish-brown color.

Collage: From the French word coller "to glue," collage is an art technique of assembling different pieces of art into one cohesive art piece. The most common pieces are newspapers, magazines, paint, photographs, and found objects which are glued down to a piece of paper or canvas. Collage was invented right after the invention of paper in China around 300 BCE.

Composition: In the visual arts, composition refers to the placement of visual elements in a painting or work of art. It also denotes the organization of people, vignettes, and lighting. The composition is essential whether the artist is arranging people, fruit, or the view of a landscape.

Concrete: The use of lightweight concrete has been used for centuries in construction; however, in the last 100 years, it has become more reliable and predictable. Concrete is a mixture of lightweight coarse aggregate with fine aggregates like shale, clay, or slate. The advantages of the newer lightweight concrete include the reduction of load for faster building rates, longer-lasting, and is an excellent thermal protector compared to brick.

Cotton: has been around since 4500 BCE and is used for clothing or weaving. The cotton plant provides a cellulose thread washed and dyed to weave into cotton material. It does not stretch, making it a very durable fabric for clothes.

Drawing: Drawing is the foundation of all art. Drawing is intuitive and part of the function of our brains used to apply marks to a surface. Most people have drawn sometime in their lives, whether in school or at home. Drawing is a simple exercise to convey a thought or share an experience with another person. Drawing can also be challenging and complex, and only with time and practice could one get better.

En Plein Air: A French expression for artists painting out in the open air, also called Peinture Sur le motif, 'painting what the eyes see.'

Foreshortening: The use of foreshortening is a technique to create perspective by exaggerating the part of an object closer to the viewer.

Frescos: Fresco painting is an ancient painting technique created by troweling wet lime plaster on a wall or ceiling. When the plaster dries, the painting becomes permanent and will last until the plaster is damaged. The plaster is painted with a scene after it dries.

Function: When creating architectural drawings, a basic rule of design states form follows function. A visual principle for architecture designates the shape of the building or structure should be principally based upon its planned purpose. To create houses, villages, or the city layout, builders relied on lines, whether straight, angled, curved, or connected, and those planning the city generally used a grid system layout when planning settlements. Architects formulate ideas and define the concepts of the new buildings rendering the multiple layers of a building in three-dimensional concepts scratched in the dirt, written on paper, or today with a computer.

Gesso: Traditionally, gesso was made from a base of white pigment and the addition of chalk and a binder. The gesso was used to prepare the base on wood panels or canvas before the artist applied paint. Modern gesso uses acrylic polymers and latex along with pigments, giving the gesso more flexibility when it is applied.

Glass: Silica is the most common component in glass, an amorphous solid material, also known as sand, and when heated is transparent even with the addition of color. Glass can be floated in a flat frame to make a sheet of glass or blown. Glass blowing has been around for 3,000 years and is the art method of melting glass on the end of a long metal tube and blowing through the tube, causing the glass to expand.

Harmony: Scale is the relationship between the piece of art and its occurrence in the space. It can be significantly larger than life or smaller than life. Proportion is the relative size of the art and the harmony found in the piece.

Jade: The mineral jade is a metamorphic rock made up of different silicates, either nephrite made from a silicate combination of magnesium and calcium or jadeite, also a silicate made from sodium and aluminum.

Linear perspective: A set of parallel lines that recede into the horizon appearing to move closer and closer until they touch. Linear perspective can produce an illusion of three-dimensional space on a piece of paper or painting.

Linen: is made from flax plant fibers and is known around the world for its absorbency and ability to stay cooler in hot weather. It is also the oldest cultivated plant in the world. The durable flax fibers are woven into the most supple, fine, and highly sought-after material ever manufactured.

Lithography: A Greek word meaning "stone" and "writing." Lithography is a print of text or pictures from an etched stone or metal plate and is based on the principle that oil and water do not mix. Using a grease pen, the artist draws directly on the stone, adding acid to etch the unprotected parts of the design into the stone. Mixed ink is spread on the damp stone, and the water is attracted to the non-etched part of the stone, the ink is attracted to the etched portion. The stone and paper are pressed together, and the image is transferred to the paper.

Marble: Marble is formed when limestone is changed by heat and pressure and recrystallizes into a light-colored rock, frequently white. Marble usually is dolomite or calcite in origin and is a combination of recrystallized carbonate elements through heat, compression, or pressure to transform from one type of rock into harder rock. Impurities in the limestone cause the colorful markings. Marble is found in extensive deposits, generally hundreds of feet deep across a mountain. People have mined marble for hundreds of years in mines or open quarries and used the marble in buildings and sculptures.

Marble process: Marble is a metamorphic rock that used to be limestone. The marble usually is dolomite or calcite in origin and is a combination of recrystallized carbonate elements through heat, compression, or pressure to transform from one type of rock into harder rock. Marble was soft enough to carve and a favorite material for sculptors. Marble is mined from quarries and used to create statues with a hammer and chisel to remove unwanted material to expose the figure as it emerges from the marble.

Mass: The mass is the three-dimensional volume of a piece of artwork. It is the volume and density, which give the art a perceived weight. One principle of architecture and a requirement for builders is the concept of the resistance of gravity and how to use natural materials in any culture to construct a building. Isaac Newton showed how gravity works as a force, and Albert Einstein theorized gravity is a curvature of space-time; however, the ancient civilizations did not have that information.

Metal casting process: The most common form of casting metal is the lost wax process and dates back to 4000 BCE. The casting of a bronze statue can be a complicated process; however, many sculptures can be made from one mold. Bronze is perhaps the most popular metal for casting sculpture. Typically, bronze is 10% tin, and 90% copper heated, mixed, and poured into molds. The early civilizations discovered bronze tools and weapons were more effective than Stone Age tools, leading to inventions advancing civilizations.

Modeling process: Modeling clay is any of a group of malleable substances such as plastic or clay, to build a sculpture. Modeling is an additive method as opposed to carving, and the artist adds material to the sculpture.

Mosaic: Mosaics are crafted by creating images using small pieces of colored tile, stone, or glass. The mosaics are used on walls, ceilings, and even floors as they are durable, lasting for centuries. Artists create mosaics by gluing small pieces of glass or stone to a wall and when it dries in place, spreading grout over the top, sealing the mosaics in place.

Paint: Paint is a combination of a binder and color, mixed to form a liquid drying as a solid. Various types of paint were invented throughout the centuries, including oil, acrylic, and watercolor, in addition to the traditional paints of early civilizations. Paint can also be contained in pressurized cans, released when the valve is pushed down, releasing a fine mist of paint.

Paper: Paper was invented in ancient China but did not become popular in Europe until the 14th century. Paper made from linen rags left to rot in large vats of water. They stamped until the linen became pulp, poured into molds, and left to dry. The results were large pieces of paper suitable to use in the newly invented printing press. Paper was also inexpensive to produce and was a way to create information for more people than the expensive vellum.

Pastels: A pastel is a finely ground powdered pigment mixed with some type of binder. Modern pastels invented in the 17th century were manufactured by machines yielding a standard product.

Perspective and Depth: An artist who paints landscapes on a two-dimensional piece of wood or panel uses the illusion of depth, a three-dimensional feeling, and the sense of reality, bringing the viewer into the scene.

Photography: Photography is the art of capturing a picture and producing a photograph from the picture. Photography captures light in a moment of time, recording the lights produced by an image on a highly sensitive material. Photographic plates were used to capture images before film was invented. The glass had an emulsion of sensitive silver salts in a thin layer. When the light hit the plate, it captured the image on the glass. Used widely for professionals seeking details, plates did not distort the image as the film could.

Photomontage: A photomontage is a group of photos made by cutting up photos and gluing them to a piece of paper, or the montage can be made in a digital photo program, like Adobe Photoshop. The montage can look like a realistic, seamless photo or be an abstract composition.

Pointillism Pointillism is a form of painting using tiny dots instead of brush strokes. Pointillism is applied in small dots of pure color by juxtaposing complementary colors directly on the canvas, combining through the eye of the viewer to form an image.

Silk: is a fiber from the cocoon of a silkworm, which is on a diet of mulberry leaves and then spins a cocoon. The cocoon is washed in hot water, which kills the silkworm leaving a thin prism-like structure called silk thread. Rewashed and spun into silk thread and dyed thousands of colors. The thread ships on the Silk Road around Asia and Europe.

Silk Screening: Silk screening is a process of printing using a silk mesh in a wooden frame to transfer an image onto another surface, like a tee-shirt.

Sketching: Sketching is a freehand drawing representing what the artist is seeing, but not necessarily the finished work.

Stone: Stones are solid pieces of different types of solid mineral matter used for building structures. Stones are readily found throughout the planet, and many civilizations still use stone for construction. Limestone is a sedimentary rock primarily composed of calcite and aragonite and usually has skeletal pieces of marine organisms. Buildings were designed and engineered to accommodate corners, supports, open spaces, columns, roofs, height, width, all dependent on the variety of stones available. Quarry marks in surviving structures reveal how most people used wooden wedges soaked in water to split the stone on its natural fault lines. Stone lasts a long time, and some of the only surviving parts of civilization are the stone sculptures.

Terracotta: Terracotta means "baked earth" in Italian and is used to describe any type of earthenware that is clay-based.

Vellum: Vellum comes from the Latin word "vitulinum," meaning "made from the calf." They used calfskin vellum to produce books or scrolls. Vellum is smooth, durable, and usually white in color, an excellent medium to write on.

Volume: The volume of artwork can also have many meanings, especially if you are comparing a 2-dimensional painting to a 3-dimensional vessel. Volume usually applies to 3-dimensional work and denotes the amount of space it contains. A vessel will usually have the same volume for a vessel of like kind and size and may occupy the same amount of shelf space yet can still have space around it.

Weaving: Weaving is the art of textile production when two yarns are woven at a right angle to each other, producing some type of fabric or cloth. The warp is the yarn attached to the loom, and the weft is the yarn woven through the alternating warp yarns to create a pattern.

Welding: Welding is a sculptural fabrication process joining metal materials with solder and heat. Different sources of fuel can be used for welding, including gas, electricity, and laser. Forge welding has been used for thousands of years by blacksmiths to join iron and steel pieces together.

Wool: is a fiber from shearing sheep, llamas, or yak and woven into clothing that retains its warmth even when wet. The coats of the animals are sheared off, washed, and spun into yarn, which is one of the warmest fabrics even when wet. The wool is dyed and usually woven on large looms.

3-d drawings: Three-dimensional drawings usually represent a building, shape, or object that has more than one dimension

Art appreciation is a journey about learning, the discovery of cultures, and their art, which has survived after they have abandoned long-ago settlements. Art is a form of creative human expression, lasting longer than cultures, buildings, government, or religion and providing a window into the past. Art is a tangible element of a bygone culture we can hold today, even though it is 30,000 years old, a small remnant of past life.

We study art to learn how to be responsible for human cultural art and to accept the diversity of people and their lifestyles. Looking at the past, we can see the influence of civilizations and time on culture and art today. For example, silk was produced and woven in China, but how long did it take to spread across Asia and into Europe? The Silk Road was a commercial enterprise supporting the transportation and selling of art for thousands of miles. Today, the internet is our influence, and we have access to millions of products on our computers. Research is faster and travels in light seconds, letting us see the rest of the world and their art, providing a way to learn and appreciate art and not just pass by with a preconceived judgment. When you understand the culture, you can understand the art, it applies to cave art, and it still pertains today in our technological culture.