Geometric Shape Chart Different Kinds of Lines in Art on a Chart

1. Line

There are many dissimilar types of lines, all characterized past their length being greater than their width. Lines can be static or dynamic depending on how the artist chooses to use them. They aid determine the motion, management and energy in a piece of work of art. We encounter line all around us in our daily lives; telephone wires, tree branches, jet contrails and winding roads are merely a few examples.

The Nazca lines in the arid coastal plains of Peru date to virtually 500 BCE were scratched into the rocky soil, depicting animals on an incredible scale, so large that they are best viewed from the air. Let'due south look at how the different kinds of line are fabricated.

Diego Velazquez'due south Las Meninas from 1656, ostensibly a portrait of the Infanta Margarita, the daughter of Male monarch Philip Iv and Queen Mariana of Spain, offers a sumptuous amount of artistic genius; its sheer size (virtually ten feet foursquare), painterly fashion of naturalism, lighting furnishings, and the enigmatic figures placed throughout the canvass–including the artist himself –is one of the great paintings in western art history. Allow's examine it (below) to uncover how Velazquez uses basic elements and principles of art to achieve such a masterpiece.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, 125.2" x 108.7". Prado, Madrid. CC By-SA

Actual lines are those that are physically nowadays. The edge of the wooden stretcher bar at the left of Las Meninas is an bodily line, as are the picture frames in the background and the linear decorative elements on some of the figures' dresses. How many other bodily lines tin can you observe in the painting?

Unsaid lines are those created past visually connecting two or more areas together. The gaze to the Infanta Margarita—the blonde primal figure in the composition—from the meninas, or maids of honor, to the left and right of her, are unsaid lines. Unsaid lines can also be created when two areas of different colors or tones come together. Can yous identify more implied lines in the painting? Where? Implied lines are found in three-dimensional artworks, as well. The sculpture of the Laocoon below, a figure from Greek and Roman mythology, is, along with his sons, beingness strangled by sea snakes sent by the goddess Athena every bit wrath against his warnings to the Trojans not to have the Trojan horse. The sculpture sets implied lines in motion as the figures writhe in agony against the snakes.

Laocoon Grouping, Roman copy of Greek original, Vatican Museum, Rome. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen. CC Past-SA

Straight or classic lines provide construction to a composition. They can exist oriented to the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal centrality of a surface. Straight lines are by nature visually stable, while nonetheless giving management to a composition. InLas Meninas, you can run into them in the canvas supports on the left, the wall supports and doorways on the correct, and in the background in matrices on the wall spaces between the framed pictures. Moreover, the pocket-sized horizontal lines created in the stair edges in the groundwork help anchor the entire visual design of the painting. Vertical and horizontal directly lines provide the virtually stable compositions. Diagonal direct lines are usually more visually dynamic, unstable, and tension-filled.

Directly lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC Past

Expressive lines are curved, calculation an organic, more dynamic character to a work of art. Expressive lines are often rounded and follow undetermined paths. In Las Meninas yous tin run across them in the aprons on the girls' dresses and in the dog'due south folded hind leg and coat pattern. Await once again at the Laocoon to see expressive lines in the figures' flailing limbs and the sinuous class of the snakes. Indeed, the sculpture seems to exist made up of nix but expressive lines, shapes and forms.

Organic lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC By

There are other kinds of line that cover the characteristics of those above yet, taken together, aid create boosted artistic elements and richer, more varied compositions. Refer to the images and examples below to become familiar with these types of line.

Outline, or contour line is the simplest of these. They create a path around the edge of a shape. In fact, outlines oft define shapes.

Outline, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Hatch lines are repeated at brusk intervals in generally i direction. They give shading and visual texture to the surface of an object.

Hatch, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Crosshatch lines provide additional tone and texture. They can exist oriented in any management. Multiple layers of crosshatch lines can give rich and varied shading to objects by manipulating the pressure of the cartoon tool to create a big range of values.

Crosshatch, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Line quality is that sense of character embedded in the way a line presents itself. Certain lines have qualities that distinguish them from others. Hard-edged, jagged lines have a staccato visual movement while organic, flowing lines create a more comfortable feeling. Meandering lines can be either geometric or expressive, and yous can encounter in the examples how their indeterminate paths animate a surface to different degrees.

Lines, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Although line every bit a visual element more often than not plays a supporting role in visual fine art, in that location are wonderful examples in which line carries a strong cultural significance as the primary subject matter.

Calligraphic lines use quickness and gesture, more akin to paint strokes, to imbue an artwork with a fluid, lyrical grapheme. To see this unique line quality, look up the work of Chinese poet and artist Dong Qichang, dating from the Ming dynasty (1555-1637). A more geometric example from the Koran, created in the Standard arabic calligraphic style, dates from the 9^th century.

Both these examples show how artists use line as both a course of writing and a visual art class. American creative person Mark Tobey (1890–1976) was influenced by Oriental calligraphy, adapting its form to the deed of pure painting within a modern abstract style described as white writing.

2. Shape

A shape is defined as an enclosed expanse in two dimensions. By definition shapes are always flat, simply the combination of shapes, color, and other means tin brand shapes announced three-dimensional, as forms. Shapes can be created in many means, the simplest by enclosing an surface area with an outline. They can also be made by surrounding an area with other shapes or the placement of different textures next to each other—for case, the shape of an island surrounded by water. Considering they are more circuitous than lines, shapes are usually more than important in the arrangement of compositions. The examples below give united states of america an idea of how shapes are made.

Referring dorsum to Velazquez'southward Las Meninas, it is fundamentally an arrangement of shapes; organic and difficult-edged, lite, dark and mid-toned, that solidifies the composition within the larger shape of the canvas. Looking at it this way, nosotros can view whatsoever work of art, whether two or 3-dimensional, realistic, abstruse or non-objective, in terms of shapes alone.

Geometric Shapes vs. Organic Shapes

Shapes tin be further categorized into geometric and organic. Examples of geometric shapes are the ones nosotros can recognize and name: squares, triangles, circles, hexagons, etc. Organic shapes are those that are based on organic or living things or are more than gratuitous form: the shape of a tree, confront, monkey, cloud, etc.

3. Grade

Form is sometimes used to describe a shape that has an implied third dimension. In other words, an artist may try to make parts of a apartment prototype announced iii-dimensional. Notice in the drawing beneath how the artist makes the unlike shapes appear iii-dimensional through the use of shading. It's a flat epitome but appears 3-dimensional. Class is used to make people, animals, trees, or anything appear three-dimensional.

This image is free of copyright restrictions.

When an epitome is incredibly realistic in terms of its forms (equally well as colour, space, etc.) such as this painting past Edwaert Collier, we phone call that trompe fifty'oeil, French for "fool the eye."

Edweart Collier, Trompe l'oeil with Writing Materials,
oil on canvas, c. 1702.
This image is in the public domain.

4. Space

Space is the area surrounding or betwixt real or implied objects. Humans categorize infinite: at that place is outer space, that limitless void we enter beyond our heaven; inner space, which resides in people'south minds and imaginations, and personal infinite, the important only intangible area that surrounds each individual and which is violated if someone else gets besides close. Pictorial space is flat, and the digital realm resides in cyberspace. Art responds to all of these kinds of space.

Many artists are equally concerned with space in their works as they are with, say, color or class. In that location are many means for the creative person to present ideas of space. Think that many cultures traditionally use pictorial space as a window to view subject field affair through, and through the discipline matter they present ideas, narratives and symbolic content. The innovation of linear perspective, an implied geometric pictorial construct dating from fifteenth-century Europe, affords the states the accurate illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, and appears to recede into the distance through the use of a horizon line and vanishing point(s) . You lot tin can meet how one-betoken linear perspective is gear up in the examples below:

1-Point Linear Perspective, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

I-point perspective occurs when the receding lines appear to converge at a single point on the horizon and used when the apartment forepart of an object is facing the viewer. Annotation: Perspective can be used to bear witness the relative size and recession into space of any object, but is most effective with difficult-edged three-dimensional objects such as buildings.

A archetype Renaissance artwork using ane point perspective is Leonardo da Vinci'south The Last Supper from 1498. Da Vinci composes the work by locating the vanishing indicate directly behind the head of Christ, thus drawing the viewer's attention to the middle. His artillery mirror the receding wall lines, and, if we follow them every bit lines, would converge at the aforementioned vanishing point.

Leonardo da Vinci, The Terminal Supper, 1498. Fresco. Santa Maria della Grazie. Piece of work is in the public domain.

2-bespeak perspective occurs when the vertical edge of a cube is facing the viewer, exposing 2 sides that recede into the distance, one to each vanishing point.

Two-Point Perspective, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

View Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Weather from 1877 to see how two-betoken perspective is used to give an accurate view to an urban scene.  The artist'due south composition, all the same, is more complex than but his use of perspective. The figures are deliberately placed to direct the viewer'due south eye from the front right of the picture show to the building's front edge on the left, which, like a ship's bow, acts as a cleaver to plunge both sides toward the horizon. In the midst of this visual recession a lamp post stands firmly in the middle to arrest our gaze from going right out the back of the painting. Caillebotte includes the little metal arm at the superlative correct of the mail to straight us again along a horizontal path, at present keeping us from traveling off the top of the sail. As relatively spare as the left side of the work is, the artist crams the right side with hard-edged and organic shapes and forms in a circuitous play of positive and negative space.

The perspective system is a cultural convention well suited to a traditional western European idea of the "truth," that is, an accurate, clear rendition of observed reality. Even after the invention of linear perspective, many artists and cultures continued to employ other ways to show pictorial space, relying on overlapping, size differences (smaller=farther), vertical placement (lower=closer; higher=further), aerial or atmospheric perspective (hazy, less detailed-further; clear, crisp, detailed=closer). THESE ARE Important!  Make SURE You lot Sympathize WHAT THEY Mean.

Examine the miniature painting of the Third Courtroom of the Topkapi Palacefrom fourteenth-century Turkey to contrast its pictorial space with that of linear perspective. It's composed from a number of different vantage points (as opposed to vanishing points), all very flat to the moving picture plane. While the overall image is seen from above, the figures and copse appear as cutouts, seeming to float in mid air. Observe the towers on the far left and correct are sideways to the picture plane. The trees and people occupying the upper parts are meant to be perceived every bit farther from the viewer every bit compared to those trees, buildings and people located most the bottom of the painting. This is an instance of vertical placement.

Equally "incorrect" as it looks, the painting does requite a detailed description of the landscape and structures on the palace grounds.

3rd Court of the Topkapi Palace, from the Hunername, 1548. Ottoman miniature painting, Topkapi Museum, Istanbul. CC BY-SA

After nearly 5 hundred years using linear perspective, western ideas most how space is depicted accurately in two dimensions went through a revolution at the beginning of the 20^th century. A young Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, moved to Paris, then western culture's capital of fine art, and largely reinvented pictorial space with the invention of Cubism, ushered in dramatically by his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907. He was influenced in part past the chiseled forms, angular surfaces and asymmetry of African sculpture (refer back to the Male Figurefrom Cameroon) and mask-like faces of early Iberian artworks. For more than information nigh this of import painting, mind to the post-obit question and answer.

In the early on 20th century, Picasso, his friend Georges Braque and a handful of other artists struggled to develop a new space that relied on, ironically, the flatness of the picture aeroplane to carry and animate traditional subject matter including figures, yet life and landscape. Cubist pictures, and eventually sculptures, became amalgams of different points of view, low-cal sources and planar constructs. It was as if they were presenting their subject matter in many ways at one time, all the while shifting foreground, middle ground and background so the viewer is not certain where ane starts and the other ends. In an interview, the creative person explained cubism this way: "The problem is now to pass, to go around the object, and give a plastic expression to the result. All of this is my struggle to break with the two-dimensional aspect*"(from Alexander Liberman, An Artist in His Studio, 1960, folio 113). Public and critical reaction to cubism was understandably negative, just the artists' experiments with spatial relationships reverberated with others and became – along with new ways of using color – a driving strength in the evolution of a modern art movement that based itself on the flatness of the picture plane. Instead of a window to await into, the flat surface becomes a ground on which to construct formal arrangements of shapes, colors and compositions. For another perspective on this idea, refer back to module i's discussion of 'abstraction'.

You can see the radical changes cubism fabricated in George Braque's landscape La Roche Guyonfrom 1909. The copse, houses, castle and surrounding rocks comprise about a unmarried complex course, stair-stepping upward the canvas to mimic the distant hill at the top, all of it struggling upward and leaning to the right inside a shallow pictorial space.

George Braque, Castle at La Roche Guyon, 1909. Oil on canvas. Stedelijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Licensed through GNU and Creative Commons

As the cubist mode developed, its forms became even flatter. Juan Gris'southward The Sunblindfrom 1914 splays the still life it represents across the canvas. Collage elements like newspaper reinforce pictorial flatness.

Juan Gris, The Sunblind, 1914. Gouache, collage, chalk, and charcoal on canvas. Tate Gallery, London. Epitome licensed under GNU Free Documentation License

It's not so difficult to understand the importance of this new idea of space when placed in the context of comparable advances in science surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century. The Wright Brothers took to the air with powered flight in 1903, the aforementioned year Marie Curie won the outset of two Nobel prizes for her pioneering work in radiation. Sigmund Freud'southward new ideas on the inner spaces of the mind and its event on beliefs were published in 1902, and Albert Einstein'southward calculations on relativity, the idea that space and time are intertwined, commencement appeared in 1905. Each of these discoveries added to human being agreement and realligned the mode we look at ourselves and our world. Indeed, Picasso, speaking of his struggle to define cubism, said "Even Einstein did non know it either! The condition of discovery is outside ourselves; but the terrifying matter is that despite all this, we can only discover what we know" (from Picasso on Fine art, A Selection of Views by Dore Ashton, (Souchere, 1960, page fifteen).

5. Value and Contrast

Value (or tone) is the relative lightness or darkness of a shape in relation to another. The value calibration, bounded on one end by pure white and on the other past black, and in between a serial of progressively darker shades of grey, gives an artist the tools to make these transformations. The value scale below shows the standard variations in tones. Values almost the lighter end of the spectrum are termed high-keyed, those on the darker end are depression-keyed.

Value Scale, xi July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC BY

In two dimensions, the use of value gives a shape the illusion of form or mass and lends an entire composition a sense of lite and shadow. The two examples beneath show the effect value has on irresolute a shape to a class.

2D Form, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC By

3D Form, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison, CC BY

This same technique brings to life what begins equally a simple line cartoon of a beau'south caput in Michelangelo's Head of a Youth and a Right Hand from 1508. Shading is created with line (refer to our give-and-take of line earlier in this module) or tones created with a pencil. Artists vary the tones by the amount of resistance they use between the pencil and the paper they're cartoon on. A drawing pencil'due south leads vary in hardness, each one giving a dissimilar tone than another. Washes of ink or color create values determined by the amount of water the medium is dissolved into.

The employ of high contrast, placing lighter areas of value against much darker ones, creates a dramatic effect, while low contrast gives more subtle results. These differences in consequence are evident in 'Guiditta and Oloferne' past the Italian painter Caravaggio, and Robert Adams' photograph Untitled, Denver from 1970-74. Caravaggio uses a high contrast palette to an already dramatic scene to increment the visual tension for the viewer, while Adams deliberately makes use of low contrast to underscore the drabness of the mural surrounding the figure on the bike.

Caravaggio, Guiditta Decapitates Oloferne, 1598, oil on canvass. National Gallery of Italian Fine art, Rome. This work is in the public domain

vi. Color

Color is the most complex artistic chemical element because of the combinations and variations inherent in its use.  Humans answer to color combinations differently, and artists study and use colour in part to give desired direction to their piece of work.

Color is primal to many forms of fine art. Its relevance, use and function in a given work depend on the medium of that piece of work. While some concepts dealing with colour are broadly applicable across media, others are non.

The full spectrum of colors is contained in white light. Humans perceive colors from the light reflected off objects. A red object, for instance, looks red because it reflects the ruby-red role of the spectrum. Information technology would be a different color under a different calorie-free. Colour theory first appeared in the 17^th century when English mathematician and scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that white light could exist divided into a spectrum by passing it through a prism.

The study of color in art and pattern frequently starts with colour theory. Color theory splits upwards colors into three categories: main, secondary, and tertiary.

The bones tool used is a colour wheel, adult past Isaac Newton in 1666. A more than complex model known as the colour tree, created by Albert Munsell, shows the spectrum fabricated up of sets of tints and shades on connected planes.

There are a number of approaches to organizing colors into meaningful relationships. Most systems differ in structure only.

Traditional Model

Traditional color theory is a qualitative attempt to organize colors and their relationships. It is based on Newton's color wheel, and continues to be the most mutual arrangement used by artists.

Blue Yellow Red Color Wheel. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

Traditional colour theory uses the same principles as subtractive colour mixing (see beneath) but prefers different primary colors.

• The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. You find them equidistant from each other on the colour wheel. These are the "elemental" colors; not produced by mixing whatever other colors, and all other colors are derived from some combination of these three.
• The secondary colors are orange (mix of red and yellow), green (mix of blue and yellow), and violet (mix of bluish and red).
• The tertiary colors are obtained past mixing one primary color and i secondary colour. Depending on amount of color used, different hues can be obtained such as reddish-orangish or yellow-green. Neutral colors (browns and grays) can exist mixed using the 3 chief colors together.
• White and black lie outside of these categories. They are used to lighten or darken a color. A lighter color (made past calculation white to it) is chosen a tint , while a darker color (made by adding black) is called a shade .

Colour Mixing

Think about colour as the result of light reflecting off a surface. Understood in this way, color tin be represented as a ratio of amounts of primary colour mixed together. Color is produced when parts of the external light source's spectrum are absorbed by the material and non reflected dorsum to the viewer's eye. For case, a painter brushes blue paint onto a canvas. The chemical composition of the paint allows all of the colors in the spectrum to be absorbed except blueish, which is reflected from the paint's surface.  Mutual applications of subtractive color theory are used in the visual arts, color printing and processing photographic positives and negatives.

• The primary colors are ruddy, yellow, and blue.
• The secondary colors are orangish, greenish and violet.
• The tertiary colors are created by mixing a primary with a secondary colour.
• Black is mixed using the iii primary colors, while white represents the absence of all colors. Note: considering of impurities in subtractive colour, a true blackness is impossible to create through the mixture of primaries. Because of this the result is closer to brown. Like to additive colour theory, lightness and darkness of a color is determined by its intensity and density.

Subtractive Color Mixing. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License

Colour Attributes

There are many attributes to color. Each 1 has an event on how nosotros perceive it.

• Hue refers to color itself, simply as well to the variations of a colour.
• Value (as discussed previously) refers to the relative lightness or darkness of one color next to another. The value of a color tin brand a departure in how it is perceived. A color on a nighttime groundwork will appear lighter, while that same colour on a light groundwork will announced darker.
• Saturation refers to the purity and intensity of a color. The primaries are the most intense and pure, just diminish every bit they are mixed to form other colors. The cosmos of tints and shades also diminish a colour's saturation. 2 colors work strongest together when they share the same intensity.

Color Interactions

Beyond creating a mixing hierarchy, colour theory also provides tools for agreement how colors work together.

Monochrome

The simplest colour interaction is monochrome. This is the employ of variations of a single hue. The advantage of using a monochromatic colour scheme is that you get a high level of unity throughout the artwork considering all the tones relate to one some other. See this in Mark Tansey's Derrida Queries de Man from 1990.

Coordinating Color

Analogous colors are similar to one some other. As their name implies, analogous colors can be found next to one another on any 12-part color cycle:

Analogous Color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Y'all can come across the result of analogous colors in Paul Cezanne's oil painting Auvers Panoromic View

Color Temperature

Colors are perceived to accept temperatures associated with them. The color bike is divided into warm and cool colors. Warm colors range from yellowish to carmine, while cool colors range from yellow-light-green to violet.  Yous tin can accomplish complex results using only a few colors when you pair them in warm and absurd sets.

Warm absurd color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are found straight contrary one another on a color wheel. Here are some examples:

• purple and yellow
• green and red
• orange and blueish

Complementary Color, 11 July 2012, Creator: Oliver Harrison. CC BY

Blue and orange are complements. When placed near each other, complements create a visual tension. This color scheme is desirable when a dramatic effect is needed using only two colors.

vii. Texture

At the most bones level, 3-dimensional works of art (sculpture, pottery, textiles, metalwork, etc.) and architecture have actual texture which is often adamant by the textile that was used to create it: forest, stone, bronze, clay, etc. Two-dimensional works of art similar paintings, drawings, and prints may try to show unsaid texture through the use of lines, colors, or other means. When a painting has a lot of actual texture from the application of thick pigment, we call that impasto.

The first prototype below is a sculpture, and similar all iii-dimensional objects information technology has bodily texture.

The next two images are details from the painting The Arnolfini Portrait past Jan van Eyck. Here, the artist has created implied texture. If you were to bear upon this painting you would not experience the textile of the clothing and carpet, the wooden floor or the smooth metallic of the chandelier, but our optics "run into" the texture.

Share this post