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The Visual ElementsLine, shape, mass, light, value, color, texture, and space are

the ingredients that an artist has available in making any work of art.

Called the visual elements, they are the elements that we perceive and respond to, when we look at a work’s form.

During the 20th century, time and motion were added to the

traditional list of elements by artists seeking to expand and

modernize artistic practice, and this lesson considers them as well.

The Visual Elements1\ Line.

2\ Shape.

3\ Mass.

4\ Light.

5\ Value.

6\ Color.

7\ Texture.

8\ Space.

1\ LINEStrictly defined, a line is a path traced by a moving point. You poise your pencil on a sheet of paper and move its point along the surface to make a line .

When you sit down to write a letter or take out your date Book to jot down a note to yourself, you are making lines, lines that are symbols of sounds.

Artists, too, use lines as symbols.

Lines can be expressive in themselves.

Sarah Sze’s installation Hidden Relief prominently

features lines that “draw” curves, circles, rules, and lattice formations in the air.

The primary functions of line in art to record the borders of form and to convey direction and motion.

Contour and Outline

Contours are the boundaries we perceive of three-dimensional forms, and contour lines are the lines we draw to record those boundaries.

An outline defines a two-dimensional shape.

Jennifer Pastor. “The Perfect

Ride” Animation. 2000. Pencil Courtesy Regen Projects, Los

Angeles.

Direction and Movement

Directional lines play an important role in Thomas Eakins’ The Biglin Brothers Racing and Théodore Géricault’s

The Raft of the Medusa. Thomas Eakins.

The Biglin Brothers Racing.1873–74. Oil on canvas,

National Gallery of Art, Washington,D.C.

ThéodoreGéricault. The Raft of the Medusa.

1818–19. Oil on canvas,

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Implied LinesOur eyes also pick up on Lines that are only implied. A common example from everyday life is the dotted line, where a ofseries dots are spaced closely enough that our mind connects them.The 18th-century French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau created a sort of dotted line of amorous couples in The Embarkation for Cythera starting with the seated couple at the right, our eyestrace a line that curves in a gentle S and leaves us evaporating into the gauzy air with the infant cupids.

The Visual Elements1\ Line

2\ Shape

3\ Mass

4\ Light

5\ Value

6\ Color

7\ Texture

8\ Space

2-3\ SHAPE & MASSA shape is a two-dimensional form. It occupies an area with identifiable boundaries.

Boundaries may be created by line (a square outlined in pencil on white paper), a shift in texture (a square of unmowed lawn in the middle of mowed lawn), or a shift in color (blue polka dots on a red shirt).

A mass is a three-dimensional form that occupies a volume of space.

We speak of a mass of clay, the mass of a mountain, the masses of a work of architecture.

The volume of space displaced by the masses of Bill Reid’s monumental sculpture

The Raven and the First Men.

Unlike the masses of The Raven and the First Men, the subtle, shadowy shapes of Emmi Whitehorse’s

Chanter are fully available to us on the page.

Shapes and masses can be divided into two broad categories, geometric and organic.

Geometric shapes and masses approximate the regular,

named shapes and volumes of geometry such as square, triangle, circle, cube, pyramid, and sphere.

Organic shapes and masses are irregular and evoke the

Living forms of nature.

A figure is the shape we detach and focus on

The ground is the surrounding visual information the figure stands out from.

The shapes we perceive as figures we call positive shapes; the shapes of the ground are negative shapes.

Mention the figures and the ground in these paintings

Implied Shapes

The shape shows three black circles, each with a wedge taken out, but the very first

thing that most of us see is a floating white triangle.

Our mind instantly perceived

the visual information as a whole—even though that

whole doesn’t exist!

Just as artists use implied lines to help direct our eyes around a composition.

They have used implied shapes to create a sense of order, so that we perceive

a work of art as a unified and harmonious whole.

Circular shield with stepped fret design. Aztec, before 1521.

The Visual Elements1\ Line

2\ Shape

3\ Mass

4\ Light

5\ Value

6\ Color

7\ Texture

8\ Space

4\ LIGHTTo our distant ancestors light seemed so miraculous that the sun was often considered to be a god and the moon

a goddess.

Today we know that light is a type of radiant energy,

and we have learned how to generate it ourselves

through electricity, yet our day-to-day experience of the varying qualities and effects of light is no less

marvelous.

Turrell has created several skyspaces over the years, including this one in a meetinghouse he designed with architect LeslieK. Elkins for a Quaker community in Houston, Texas.The skyspace here is a 12foot-square opening set at the center of a curving white ceiling.Artificial lighting hidden along the base of the ceiling contributes to the impression by causing the ceiling to seem to detach itself from the walls, as though it too were floating.

Implied Light: Modeling

Mass in Two Dimensions

From The Visit we understand something of the texture of

the back wall and the masses of the robed sculptures because of

the way light and shadow model them, or give them a three-dimensional appearance.

We cannot see the source of light in the photograph, but we

understand from the way the shadows fall that it is off to the right, and that the statues are

facing almost directly into it.Manuel AlvarezBravo. The Visit.

The Visual Elements1\ Line

2\ Shape

3\ Mass

4\ Light

5\ Value

6\ Color

7\ Texture

8\ Space

5\ ValueValue exists in a seamless continuum from white

(the highest value) to black (the darkest value).

for convenience, we often simplify this continuum

into a scale, a sequence of equal perceptual steps.

With chiaroscuro, artists employ values—lights and Darks – to record contrasts of light and

shadow in the natural world.

One of the great masters of chiaroscuro was Leonardo

da Vinci. His unfinished drawing of The Virgin and Saint Anne with the Christ Child and John

the Baptist.

Hatching, areas of closely spaced parallel lines

Darker values were achieved

Through additional sets of parallel lines laid across the first, a technique called crosshatching.

Another technique for suggesting value is stippling, in which areas of dots average

out through optical mixing into value

The Visual Elements1\ Line

2\ Shape

3\ Mass

4\ Light

5\ Value

6\ Color

7\ Texture

8\ Space

6\ COLORIt is probably safe to say that none of the visual elements gives us as much pleasure as color.

Many people have a favorite color that they are drawn to.

Various studies have demonstrated that color affects

a wide range of psychological and physiological responses.

There can be no doubt that color “works’’ on the human

brain and body in powerful ways.

Color is a function of light. without light there can be no color. The principles of color theory explain why this

effect occurs.

In 1666 Newton passed a ray of sunlight through a prism, a transparent

glass form with nonparallel sides.

He observed that the ray of

sunlight broke up or

refracted into different colors, which were arranged

in the order of the colors of the rainbow.

In fact, all colors are dependent on light, and no object possesses

color intrinsically.

You may own a red shirt and a blue pen and a purple chair, but

those items have no color in and of themselves.

What we perceive as color

is reflected light rays. When light strikes the red shirt, for example, the shirt absorbs all the color rays except the red ones, which are reflected, so your eye perceives red.

If we take the colors separated out by Newton’s prism—red, orange, yellow,

green, blue, and violet—add the transitional color red-violet (which does not

exist in the rainbow), and arrange these colors in a circle, we have acolorwheel

Primary colors—red, yellow, and blue— They are called primary because (theoretically at least) they cannot be made by any mixture of other colors.

Secondary colors—orange, green, and violet—Each is made by combining two primary colors.

Intermediate colors, also known as tertiary colors,

are the product of a primary color and an adjacent secondary color.

For instance, mixing yellow with green yields yellow-green.

We speak of the colors on the red-orange side of the wheel as

Warm colors, perhaps because of their association with sunlight and firelight.

The colors on the blue-green side are cool colors, again probably because of their association with sky, water, shade, and so on.

Color Properties

Any color has three properties. They are called hue, value, and intensity.

Hue is the name of the color according to the categories of the color wheel—green or red

or blue-violet.

Value, again, refers to relative lightness or darkness.

Intensity—also called chroma or saturation—refers to the

relative purity of a color. Colors may be pure and saturated

Color Harmonies

A color harmony, sometimes called a color scheme, is the selective

use of two or more colors in a single composition.

Monochromatic harmonies are composed of variations on the same

hue, often with differences of value and intensity.

Inka Essenhigh. In Bed

ComplementaryHarmonies involve colors directly opposite each other on the

color wheel, such as red and green.

Analagous harmonies combine colors adjacent to one another on the color wheel.

Triadic harmonies are composed of any three colors equidistant from each other on the color wheel.

Numerous other color harmonies have been identified and named.

Gaugin’s Te Aa No Areois

owes a great deal to the triadic harmony of blue-green, red ,violet, and yellow-orange,

as well as to the complementary opposition of blue-green

and red-orange.

Emotional Effects of Color

See text book p 94-95

The Visual Elements1\ Line

2\ Shape

3\ Mass

4\ Light

5\ Value

6\ Color

7\ Texture

8\ Space

7\TEXTURE AND PATTERNTexture refers to surface quality—a perception of smooth or rough, flator bumpy, fine or coarse.

Actual Texture is literally tactile, a quality we could experience through touch.

The bird is made of marble, a fine-grained stone that can be polished to a very smooth finish.

The progression of textures contributes to our sense of the sculpture’s movement.

Visual Texture

By visual texture, however, we mean something less literal.

We may speak of visual texture in a painting or drawing when markings our

eyes associate with texture are there, whether they actually depict texture or not. Raoul Dufy. Regatta

at Cowes

Pattern

Pattern is any decorative, repetitive motif or design. Pattern can create visual

texture, although visual texture may not always be seen as a pattern.

Samuel Fosso. The Chief:He Who Sold Africa to the

Colonists

The Visual Elements1\ Line

2\ Shape

3\ Mass

4\ Light

5\ Value

6\ Color

7\ Texture

8\ Space

8\ SpaceThe space in and around a work of art is not a void, and

it is very much there. It is a dynamic visual element that interacts with the lines and shapes and colors and

textures of a work of art to give them definition.

Consider space in this way: How could there be a line if there were not the spaces on either side of it to mark

its edges? How could there be a shape without the space around it to set it off?

Three-Dimensional Space

Sculpture, architecture, and all other forms with mass exist in three-dimensional space—that is, the actual

space in which our bodies also stand.

Implied Space: Suggesting depth in two dimensions