Elements of Visual Arts

• Visual arts date back to the beginning of humanity.
• Common mediums include painting with natural pigments and petroglyphs.
• The purpose and creator of early visual arts are debated.
• Paintings in resonant caves suggest singing or chanting accompanied the art.

Elements of Visual Arts

• Elements serve as the vocabulary of visual arts
• Principles of composition serve as the grammar
• Point is the most fundamental unit of visual perception.
• A line is a continuous mark that may be straight, curved, implied, or gestural.

Types of Lines

• Actual Line: Clearly visible and continuous.
• Implied Line: Created by a series of points or objects.
• Tone: Lightness and darkness of a line.
• Movement: Straight or curved.
• Direction: Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, meander.
• Perspectival line: Lines used to create an illusion of depth.
• Parallel/ perspective lines suggest order.
• Collide lines suggest randomness, chaos, conflict, disorder.
• Gesture lines depict volume and surface and express movement and emotions.
• Lines, tone, and volume define the shape of things, using techniques like hatching.

Colour

• Colour is a phenomenon perceived visually by humans.
• It has associated meanings.

Properties of Colour

• Hue: Pure state of colour.
• Intensity/ Chroma: Determined by adding neutral colors, indicating brightness or dullness.
• High intensity: brilliant, alive, eye-catching.
• Low intensity: faded, dull.
• Value: Shade (darkness), Tone (greyness), Tint (lightness).

Mixing of Colour

• Additive: Applies when one wavelength is mixed with another (transmissive).
• Subtractive: Apply to reflective surfaces.

Pigment

• Pigment is the colouring matter.
• Lazuli is blue.
• Mummy is brown.

Colour Wheel

• The colour wheel is a device used to understand colour relationships.
• Complementary colours are opposite to one another on the wheel.
• Analogous colours are beside each other.

Texture

• Texture refers to the surface characteristics of an object.
• Actual/ tactile texture can be felt.
• Visual/ virtual texture appears textured to the eye.

Pattern

• Pattern is a repeated visual form, either natural or geometric.

Shape

• Shape exists in two-dimensional works.
• Regular shapes are geometric.
• Irregular shapes are complex with no set pattern.
• Irregular shapes are natural, organic, or biomorphic.

Volume

• Volume is found in three-dimensional works and can be simulated or virtual.

Space

• Space allows art to be perceived as a whole.
• It can enhance or ruin an artwork.
• Buffer: Empty area around.
• Positive space is occupied by an object.
• Negative space is the void between/ around subjects.
• Planar space is a flat surface.

Types of Space

• Three-dimensional space is occupied by an artwork with volume.
• Flexible space is used in performing, installation, and multimedia arts.

Principles of Composition of Visual Arts

• Elements plus composition make up visual arts.

Balance

• Balance involves placing elements so that the visual weight is distributed evenly.
• Visual weight: How much an element captures attention.

Types of Balance

• Symmetrical: Equal weight is found throughout the composition.
• Asymmetrical: Weight is distributed equally, but one-half doesn’t mirror the other.
• Radial: All parts radiate from the centre.

Rhythm

• Rhythm involves recurring motifs and designs and is related to pattern.

Types of Rhythm

• Regular: Symmetrically repeated parts separated by equal intervals.
• Alternating: Different components separated by set intervals.
• Eccentric: Irregular but beats still connects.
• Progressive: Moves from fast to slow, or slow to fast.

Proportion

• Proportion is the size of one part relative to another.

Scale

• Scale is the size of a component in relation to what one considers normal.

Emphasis

• Emphasis creates a focal point in a work, with lesser points supporting it.

Unity

• Unity gives coherence to a work and makes all elements stick together.

Variety

• Variety provides a break from monotony.

Perspective

• Perspective creates the illusion of space on a flat surface.
• It is done by imitating what the eye can see.
• Vanishing point: Point on the flat surface where perspectival lines meet.
• Horizon level: Line that corresponds to a person’s eye level.
• One-point perspective: Single point on the horizon level.
• Two-point perspective: Two points on the horizon levels.
• Three-point perspective: Additional point, below or above the horizon line.
• Multiple-point perspective: Has more than three vanishing points and is used in complex landscapes and backgrounds.
• Aerial/ atmospheric perspective: Manipulation of tones to mimic how objects become blurry in the distance.
• Isometric perspective: Represents length, width, height.
• Time and motion: Implies movement by making objects blurry.

Total Sensory Engagement

• Chance and spontaneity have a place in a composition.
• Contemporary arts engage all the senses.

Art Material and Processes

• Pigments: Mostly natural before the mid-19th century.
• Binder: Liquid in which the pigment is ground that holds the pigment to a support when dry.
• Support: Surface being painted.
• Mordant: Binder for pigments used in dyeing textiles.

Painting

• Fresco uses water as a binder and is done on wet/ dry plaster.
• Tempera uses egg yolk and water as binder and is done on a wooden panel covered with gesso.
• Encaustic uses melted beeswax and is done on board or wooden surface.
• Oil uses linseed oil, walnut oil, or plant-based oils, takes time to dry, and is characterized by high intensity colour.
• Craquelure: Fine networks of cracks.
• Watercolour/ aquarelle/ wash: Pigments are suspended in gum arabic and thinned by water.
• Acrylic uses soluble, synthetic polymer, dries flat, and may need varnish.
• Magna is a variety of acrylic.
• Water-soluble/ water miscible/ water mixable oil exists.
• Water colour pencil: Dry pigments laid on a surface then mixed and modified by light washes.

Printing

• Printing involves making multiple copies of one image.
• It was made possible by the printing press.
• Relief: Parts of the matrix that are to be ink-free having been cut away/ removed.
• Intaglio: Made by incising channels into a copper or metal plate with a sharp instrument—burin—to create the image, leaving ink only in the incised channels below the surface.
• Dry Point: Artist creates an image by scratching the burin directly into a metal plate
• Etching is done using acid.
• A protective layer is coated on a plate before the image is scratched.
• Planar: Created on the surface of the matrix without any cutting or incising.
• The surface of the matrix, usually a thin metal plate or Plexiglass, is completely covered with ink and areas are partially removed by wiping, scratching away.
• Monoprints/ Monotypes: Simplest and painterly of the printing media and cannot be reproduced in editions.
• Lithography works on the principle that oil and water repel each other, and the image is created using an oily crayon on a limestone.
• Screen printing/ Serigraphy is associated with printing on fabric.
• It started as a fine art in the Philippines in 1969.

Sculpture

• Sculpture is a three dimensional art medium.
• Free standing sculptures can be viewed from all sides.
• Relief is attached to a background, either high or low relief.
• Kinetic incorporates movement.
• Subtractive methods involve carving from materials such as wood or stone.
• Additive methods involve modeling and assembling materials.
• Casting uses both subtractive and additive methods.

Media in the Technological Age

• Photography began with the daguerreotype camera.
• Film creates an illusion of movement consisted of still photographs projected to a screen.
• Television exists.
• Magnetic tapes are used as a storage device that was eventually developed into digital storage.

Visual Art Forms

• It concretizes the subject matter
• It provides a system of classification
• Figurative art can be immediately related to nature and objects outside the work of art.
• Magic Realism is an extreme form of figurative art where images are almost photographic.
• Non-figurative art does not represent actual objects or realities.
• Abstract expressionism/ non-figurative abstraction is an extreme form of non-figurative art with no obvious subject except the paint itself or the artist’s brush strokes.
• Abstract art involves an artist drawing out the essence of a visual image.
• Style refers to a specific choice and configuration of elements.

Subject Matter

• Landscape shows a scene, usually from nature, rural, pastoral, or idyllic places.
• Seascape features the sea, boats, boat docks, or piers.
• Still life/ Natura morta includes natural objects whose forms are arranged deliberately.
• Portrait features the human figure, face, bust, or full figure in seated, standing, kneeling, or motion as an individual or group.
• Genre depicts everyday life, such as planting, harvesting, feasting, or celebrating.
• History depicts historical scenes.
• Allegorical/ symbolic scenes feature Greco-Roman deities or personifications of values, attitudes, or attributes.
• Religious art depicts doctrines of religion.

Minor Visual Art Forms

• Advertising art informs and influences the public to patronize certain goods or services or to support persons or policies using paid space or time in any media.
• Bamboo art includes works made of bamboo, with variety and age determining its purpose.
• Basketry involves fashioning containers by weaving, plaiting, or braiding organic materials like leaves, vines, midribs, and boles.
• Book design is the artistic structuring and proficient reproduction of bound pages of text and images protected by cardboard, cloth, or leather-bound covers involving creative and integrative use of images.
• Dress includes garments or articles of apparel worn by individuals or groups of individuals in a given society and at a given time and is usually complemented by specific accessories and hairstyles.
• Embroidery is the art of decorative stitching, especially by hand.
• Food art is the artistry in the presentation and/or packaging of food.
• Furniture/ Muebles/ Kasangkapan includes functional and decorative objects found in a dwelling or any building, public or private, for storage and display, as support for the human body, and as a surface on which to lay things.
• Leaf-art includes ephemeral works made of leaf which may have a functional as well as aesthetic use.
• Mat-weaving is the art of weaving or plaiting strips of organic fibers into mats.
• Metalcraft includes all works or objects created from metal.
• Needlework is the craft of using needles to create patterns and motifs, such as embroidery, cross-stitch, tatting, crochet, or knitting.
• Paper art involves skillful cutting, pasting, recycling, or constructing of objects from thin sheets of material made of cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags, and grasses.
• Personal ornamentation takes various forms, which generally relate to degrees of engagement with the body as either a permanent or temporary appendage.
• Pottery/ Ceramics includes functional and decorative objects made from clay and fired at high temperatures.
• Tattooing is the process of marking one’s skin permanently with ink or pigment made of plant dyes applied by sharp instruments like needles or thorns.
• Textile weaving is the process of making cloth by means of interlacing a series of parallel longitudinal threads (warp) at right angles with another series of lateral threads (weft or woof).
• Zine is a handmade publication which adheres to the do-it-yourself (DIY) punk ethos.