The Art Vocab Kick Off

I earned my Bachelors of Fine Art in my 20s. Part of the core curriculum in art foundation was a vocabulary course. We must first have a common language to have discourse about and critique art. It’s like you are giving a critique of my art in Italian when I only speak English. No-workie. I wanted to share that same language with you so you may have a better understanding and ability to discuss your or anyone else’s art.

There’s much to cover, so I’m chunking it into categories. Let’s start with talking about The Elements of Art. These are the basic components we use together to create a work of visual art. They include color, form, value, line, shape, space, and texture. Then we can move into composition, technique, best practices for critiquing a work, and so on.

Here’s a quick introduction to some of what we will cover in upcoming blogs.

Let’s talk color. Color is viewed when light is emitted from or reflected off an object. There is no color without light. Ever notice there is no color in the dark? Yep, it doesn’t exist in the dark, even though the object still does. Color is 100% dependent on light. Sir Isaac Newton was the first to discover the link between light and color. Check out how I use color in my art HERE.

Most of us have learned that a rainbow is formed when sunlight bends, or refracts, when it hits droplets of water in the atmosphere. Once refracted, the light reflects to our eyes in different wavelengths. The length of the wavelength determines the color we see.

 Color Wheel I created

Value is, simply put, how light or dark something is. This is easy to see when we look at the grey scale stretching between black and white. Black has a low or dark value while white has a high or light value, and the greyscale is relative between the two. You can also say that something is high or low key. But what about color? How can you tell the value of a color? You can probably guess that navy blue has a low value while yellow has a high value.  So tell me, what’s the value of red?

Stick around and check back every week to see what dope education pops up next!

Feel free to reach out with any questions or ideas you come up with.

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Red is always on the outside of the rainbow, as violet is always on the inside. This is because Red has the longest wavelength and violet has the shortest. The rest of the colors are represented by the spectrum in between. There’s a lot to be said of color, and we’ll do a deep dive in the next blog.

Alright, what about form as an element of art? Form is what gives something a three-dimensional look. Sure, that’s easy with sculpture. It is literally 3D. The physical height, width, and depth all describe the form in space. But what of drawing and painting? Those are on a two-dimensional plane made up of just height and width. Well, the same goes for them, just a little trickier.

We use light and shadow to represent something three-dimensional on a surface. The negative space around the depicted object helps to give the positive form or object an orientation in space so that it doesn’t look like it is floating. Check out how my Italian Artichokes feel grounded with just a couple of shadows HERE.

Love/Cupid by Lorenzo Bartolini

It is typically a bright color, so it has a great visual weight, and we assume it has a low deep value. You might be surprised to learn its actually has a medium to high value, like a lighter grey. We’ll look at that in the next blogs as well. Think of it this way: value is what’s left when you remove the actual color. If you can’t tell, try this trick. Take a picture, then edit it to be in grayscale or black and white. That will give you the true value of something. Check out that pic!!

 Me Graduating with my Bachelors of Fine Art

Blind Contour by Me, Brooke!

Line seems pretty self-explanatory, but there’s a lot to it. It’s what we have been drawing since we could hold a crayon, but it’s much more than that. It shows shape, describes form, and creates movement in an artwork. Lines can be thick or thin. They can be curved or straight. They can have sharp or blurry edges. CLICK HERE to check out my post with varying lines. More on that coming soon. Artists use line in lots of different ways. I love to build up parallel lines to create shadow. Another great way to build up value is to use hatching lines, which are lines laid perpendicular to each other. There are even invisible or implied lines, like when someone draws a box, and you know that  the back corner is there, even if you don't 

see it. Lines that describe the curved edge of something are called contour lines.

One of my favorite types of drawing is semi-blind contour. It’s when you only look at the model without looking at the paper you are drawing on. It’s created by following the contour of the model’s outline and it’s features exactly as you see them using one continuous line without lifting the pen. It doesn’t describe value or shading. Just the line. Once in a while, you can look at the paper to reposition your pen, but then continue by only looking at the model again.

Check out the video in the related links to see my nephew and me using this technique to draw each other at the same time. I like to come back in with paint to make it more interesting to look at, but you don’t have to. It was so very fun, and anyone can do it. You don’t have to be an artist. 

Shape is formed by showing the length and width of something. Shapes can be put together to describe something three-dimensional. In sculpture, shape is always three-dimensional and has length, width, and depth. Shapes mainly fall into two categories. Geometric shapes are squares, rectangles, triangles, and so on. Organic shapes have more variation in their boundaries and form. Organic shapes are shapes more often found in nature. Think of a river or a tree.

 My sketch book

Cypress I painted in Italy using one point perspective

Space is the area that helps define shape and depth. We can create and observe the space between objects, within shapes, around forms, and when you put that all together, you get the illusion of depth and dimension. Layering objects in the foreground, midground and background help to further define a sense of space and depth perception. Using perspective in a composition gives the illusion of deep space. We speak of positive space as the space of the main feature, and negative space is the space around the object or form. More on this later.

Texture is the real or perceived quality of the surface of something. We can speak of the texture of the watercolor paper. Is it rough, like cold-pressed, or smooth, like hot-pressed? When the surface of paper has texture, it’s referred to as the tooth. They give different results in painting as well as drawing.  You can see the texture of my watercolor paper in THIS POST.  In sculpture, texture is literal, it can actually be felt if you touch it. The artist may choose something smooth like the marble of Michaelangelo’s David. You can see Michaelangelo’s process in the texture of the unfinished Abbozzato. In paintings like Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the texture of the paint is created by the thickness of the paint and use of brush strokes.

Abbozzato by Michelangelo (unfinished)

The perceived quality of texture is what we might imagine the surface of an object would feel like if we could touch it. A teddy bear with a fluffy texture has a very different look from a teddy bear with a smooth surface that might look like it were made of shiny metal.

Now, when someone talks to you about “The Elements of Art,” you have a good idea of what they mean. We will also be discussing watercolor techniques, wet on wet for example, what a medium is, more paint terms, vocabulary regarding drawing, different types of artwork styles, perspective, and the like.

David by Michelangel