LESSON 5: Elements of Art

 LESSON 5

Elements of  Art 

In this lesson, you learned about the seven elements that make up visual art. This is a great starting point for you to explore visual art further on your own using one or more of the prompts below.

What are the elements of art?

There are seven main elements of art that artists can use to create their work. An element is an aspect of an artwork that, taken with other elements, makes up the whole of a work. No art can be created without the use of at least one of these elements, and most artists use many or all of them when completing a piece. The seven elements of art are:

• Line
• Shape
• Space
• Value
• Form
• Texture
• Color

It is important to understand each of these elements individually in order to understand how they can work together to create beautiful and evocative artwork.

The 7 elements of art are all important to artistic creation. There are a variety of elements of art definitions that will place a greater or lesser value on one or another of these elements, but the truth is that all of them can have equal importance in the art world. While all elements are important, not all of them will be used in every piece. Here are a few elements of art examples that show how each one can be used in a work of art:

• A painting is likely to use space, color, and line, but may be less concerned with form and texture.
• A sculpture uses form, space, and texture, and sometimes other elements as well.
• A pencil drawing uses line, value, and shape, but probably does not use color or form.

In order to understand what each of these terms means, it is essential to look at them in more detail.

Elements of Art

Line

A line is one of the simplest elements of art. Lines are marks upon paper or canvas. They can be horizontal, vertical, curved, or any other shape. Art forms that use lines include drawings, paintings, and other two-dimensional art forms. Even a few sparing lines can create an interesting and meaningful work of art, which is one of the reasons why artists often spend so much time doing line work as practice. Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Degas are just a few famous artists who have used lines to create expressive graphite drawings.

Shape

Connecting lines together to enclose some areas is called shape. Shapes are often organic, meaning that they follow the kinds of shapes that one might find in nature and are more or less irregular. Some artists also use geometric shapes, which are the genre of shapes one might find in a mathematics textbook. Most drawings that use lines will also use shapes. Artists who used distinctive, often geometric shapes include Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Piet Mondrian. 

Space

Space is an interesting element in art. It is the variation of size and shape in the elements of a drawing or painting. Often, this serves to create the illusion of depth on a flat canvas. One way to create the illusion of depth is to have objects on the canvas overlap. Painters who do not use space in their work often create paintings that look as though they are flat or exist on a single plane, which can itself be a valuable and well-considered choice. Some artists have used space to create an unusually developed depth of field in a piece or to alter how people will perceive a work of art depending on the angle from which they view it. Such artists include JMW Turner and Gustave Caillebotte. Hieronymous Bosch used space to confuse the eye and make it difficult to know what the scale of an image was meant to be. 

Value

The value in art is a quality or a value of light and dark of a certain shade or tone. This art element is best understood if visualized as a scale or a gradient. In two-dimensional artworks, the application of value can help in giving a shape the illusion of mass or volume or it can give the entire composition a sense of lighting and depth. By playing with effects of shading and of contrast, artists manipulate the public’s eye and attempt to guide it to the focal point of the painting or drawing. It is a well-known fact that the best way to attract the eye is to place the lightest element against a dark element. This, not only creates the focal point of interest, but it can produce a dramatic effect.

Form

In terms of art, form refers to objects that are 3-Dimensional, or have length, width, and height.  The world we live in made up almost entirely of forms. As artists, we must have a strong understanding of form and how to create the illusion of form in drawings and paintings. An element of art, means objects that have three dimensions. I like to think of form as a 3-D shape. 

Texture

Texture refers to the way an object feels to the touch or looks as it may feel if it were touched.  Texture is one of the seven elements of art.  Understanding it fully will lead to stronger drawings and paintings.  Texture - element of art that refers to the way an object feels to the touch or looks as it may feel.

Color

Color An element of art made up of three properties: hue, value, and intensity. Intensity: quality of brightness and purity (high intensity= color is strong and bright; low intensity= color is faint and dull) Texture An element of art that refers to the way things feel, or look as if they might feel if touched. Colorproduced by light reflecting off of objects.