Elements and Principles of Art

A Story by Olivia Adamson

Art is considered to be ambiguous, beautiful, skillful, meaningful, unique, and full of interpretations...

Art is considered to be ambiguous, beautiful, skillful, meaningful, unique, and full of interpretations. The main elements of art include line, color, value, shape, form, space, and texture. This creative area of human knowledge has the following principles: balance, emphasis, contrast, rhythm and movement, pattern and repetition, unity, variety, and proportion. However, art loses its sense when the elements and principles are not followed. Consequently, it is important to combine all these elements and principles harmoniously to achieve the desired outcome and make the artwork understandable for the audience. Thus, art cannot exist without particular elements and principles as they enable to describe what an artist has done, communicate audience’s thoughts and feelings, and analyze what event, person, or object was depicted in a particular artwork.

The Importance of Elements of Art

According to Collingwood, art is the truth, language, imagination, consciousness, thinking, feeling, craft, amusement, magic, and representation. Thus, it has its principles and elements necessary for revealing its true entity. The elements of art are the ingredients of art and the building blocks that make art meaningful, valuable, and essential. A line is one of the major elements as it is a mark made on a surface that has its direction and length. The lines can acquire diverse meanings, starting from abstract, implied, and descriptive to two- or three-dimensional ones. Each line is important, because they can indicate the direction, provide calmness or aggression, and suggest the period when the artwork was created. In particular, the horizontal lines are quiet and calm, while the vertical lines suggest dynamics and movement. The diagonal lines, on the contrary, provide a feeling of vitality and movements. For example, Chinese painter Ku Kaizhi in his The Nymph of the Luo River pays much attention to the lines as the way to reveal his intentions. That is why he uses the horizontal lines to reinforce calmness of the landscape and provide the sense of space and peacefulness. The vertical lines of his painting reveal the power and authority of both mythological and human figures. Another prominent artist Vincent Van Gogh in his Starry Night uses the abstract lines to reinforce the uncertainty of night time.

Color is another essential element of art that consists of value based on lightness or darkness, intensity or brightness, and multiple hues. Intensity, for instance, can be high and low. The first case indicates that the artist uses strong and bright colors, while the second �" faint and dull colors. Hence, the choice of color plays one of the leading roles in art as it affects the composition of any artwork by creating emphasis, producing rhythm, unifying a scene, and harmonizing with other objects. For example, Salvador Dali in his painting The Persistence of Memory experimented with diverse colors to depict what is hidden in human mind and consciousness. While the overall warm tones provoke calmness and harmony, the bright colors insist on the contradiction and ambiguity of human mind. Thus, color is his instrument to reflect certain feelings and emotions and create the necessary mood. In his painting Swans Reflecting Elephant, Salvador Dali employs blistering hues to depict a Catalonian landscape in the background and to express the precision of all details. Claude Monet in his painting Water Lilies uses bright and strong shades of green and blue to create the realistic picture and impress viewers with natural perfection, harmonize colors, and depict water and lilies as a single unity that can not be separated.

Value is the lightness or darkness of colors or tones that can be used to reinforce or weaken some details and objects of the artwork. Black has the darkest values, and white has the lightest value. However, there is also a middle grey that is the value halfway between these extremes. Value variation is important, because it helps to see the objects, describe the scene in the ways the color and other visual elements cannot, and create the visual structure of the painting. For example, Jean Charlot in her painting Tarascan Idol uses the lightest value and the value halfway to express the mythical entity of the idol and his importance for the humanity. Moreover, the painter uses value to show the location of the light source and other characteristics of the subject.

Texture is not less essential element of art that refers to the way things would look or feel if touched. It is related to the smoothness or roughness of the surface of the artwork. Every art object has its texture that is used to reinforce lightness or influence the colors. Rough texture has a maximum contrast and is applied to make the painting special in depth, esthetically dynamic, and emotionally active. Smooth texture, on the contrary, is used to show the minimum contrast and make the painting spatially static, esthetically decorative, and emotionally passive. For instance, Vincent Van Gogh in his above-mentioned painting Starry Night employed thickly layered texture to create the impression that the trees, the moon, the stars, and the buildings in it simply vibrate with life.

Space is an element of art that define positive and negative areas and sense of depth achieved in a given artwork. Space is the area and distance between, above, around, below, and within things. Depth is created through foreground, middleground, and foreground. Positive area is filled with something, and negative area is an empty one. The illusion of space can be created with the help of overlapping, placement, size, details, color and value, and perspective. For example, Wassily Kandinsky in his Composition IV showed the free-floating compositional structure demonstrating dynamism of depth and contributing to the development of the collage style.

Shape is perceived as two-dimensional, and form is perceived as three-dimensional. These two elaborate techniques are determined by other art elements. For this reason, a triangle is a shape as it is two-dimensional, but a pyramid is a form because it is three-dimensional. Shape can be also flat or limited to width and height, while form can be free flowing. The first element plays an important role in the creation of art as it helps to produce complex drawings and paintings, contributes to the balance, and affects composition. For example, Salvador Dali in his painting The Persistence of Memory deforms the watches to reinforce the symbolic meaning of time. Van Gogh’s Starry Night is a perfect choice of combination and composition as the curves and strokes in his works are amazing geometric figures that distinguish him from the other artists.

The Principles of Art and their Value

The principles of art indicate the ways of organization of the elements of art or the tools to create it. Thus, balance is one of the most necessary principles as it is the way of arrangement of other elements to create a feeling of stability in an artwork. It can be symmetrical when the part of the painting is organized in such a way that one side mirrors another one. Interestingly, balance can also be termed as the extent to which a given artwork can produce an effect of equilibrium in a pictorial and sculptural form. Moreover, balance is the way to control gravity, and it can be asymmetrical when one side of composition does not reflect the design of another one. For example, Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper is based on the symmetrical balance as the disciples are sitting symmetrically. Salvador Dali’s painting The Persistence of Memory is another example of asymmetrical balance.

Emphasis is the art principle that presupposes the focal point of an image as it is when one thing or object attracts the most attention. In particular, Goya’s painting Cronos Devouring His Children demonstrates that the crucial point here refers to Cronos and his children as the driving forces of drama.

Another essential technique called contrast implies a striking difference between two things in order to invoke tension and boost interest. Contrast refers to the arrangement of opposite elements such as large vs. small shapes, rough vs. smooth texture, light vs. dark colors, etc. In painting, contrast creates drama, excitement, and visual interest. Basically, contrast can be high and low, so the paintings with high contrast have strong differences between light and dark.

Another aspect is rhythm which is a regular repetition of elements to produce a feeling of movement and look. That is to say, Vincent Van Gogh’s painting Starry Night reflects rhythm and movement. It is necessary to mention that apart from the music, rhythm is a repetition of values, shapes, and colors. Thus, in this painting, the outstanding painter uses rhythm to play with blue and yellow colors that make this artwork seem magic and even mysterious It means that the artist shows movement and dynamics through the repetition and in such a way creates the necessary atmosphere. Movement here is also showed through the repetition of the brushstrokes and the swirling motion of colors in the sky. Another example of rhythm is Claude Monet’s painting Poplars where the objects and colors are located rhythmically. Rhythm and movement are also obvious in Fighting Forms by Franz Marc, where the artist masterfully plays with colors as well.

Pattern and repetition are related to the repetition of design and are necessary components in creating the sense of visual movement. Additionally, pattern is used to establish a visual beat. In most cases, these techniques are regular and harmonious owing to the repetition of colors, shapes, and lines. The artwork Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol demonstrates such repetition of objects that is reinforced by the diversity of colors.

Unity is when all objects, principles, and elements work together to create a necessary image. The principle of unity can be achieved when all objects and components of the artwork are harmonious and provide the sense of completion. Unity is seen and felt when all parts of the artwork provide the sense of harmony and balance. Thus, the painting Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci demonstrates the unity of colors, style, and atmosphere. It means that the painter managed to combine all principles and elements to achieve both unity and harmony.

Variety is the use of differences and changes to provoke the interest to the artwork. It is the way of adding some spices to the art. Moreover, it is also the tool for the manipulation with the viewers’ consciousness. This principle of art is typical for Kandinsky who uses the variety of colors, shapes, and lines overlapping with these elements intentionally. It means that variety is the way of diversification of art and play with viewers’ mind. Walter Wick’s I Spy is a bright example of the implementation of the principle of variety as the elements here are different and combined in a non-chaotic and pleasing manner.

It is crucial to mention that unity and variety are art principles that are interrelated, since unity can be expressed through the same color and size, and variety is showed with the help of different sizes and colors. For example, the artwork Several Circles by Wassily Kandinsky is the abstract composition. Thus, the unity in his painting is provided by the repetition of circles located in the local background. Variety, however, is expressed through varying colors and sizes of the circles. Therefore, it is obvious that variety and unity are the ways of showing the symbolic significance and properties of the artwork.

Proportion is the comparative relationship of one part of the artwork with another one. It is mainly the relationship of size. For example, Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Olga in the Armchair demonstrates the harmonic proportions of woman that add her beauty and attractiveness. Another painting of the same artist entitled The Dream is also well-organized; it responds to the art principle of proportion. Moreover, that proportion can also be expressed through colors. Thus, Arrangement in Grey and Black by James Abbott McNeill Whistler is an example of proportion of black and grey colors. Some artists deliberately play with this technique for some artistic reasons. Particularly, Fernando Botero in his Family Portrait depicted the family members with such large volume and size to add the humorous character to the painting.

Conclusion

Art cannot exist without such elements as line, color, value, shape, form, space, and texture and without such principles as balance, emphasis, contrast, rhythm and movement, pattern and repetition, unity, variety, and proportion. The art elements are necessary to reveal what an artist has done and how he/she communicates audience’s thoughts and feelings. However, every artist mainly focuses on a single element or on their combination to put in practice his/her thoughts and feelings. In any case, the art principles are valuable, because they help to clarify the meaning that the author strived to convey in a particular artwork. It is obvious that there should be the harmony between art elements and art principles to achieve the desired result. Consequently, following art principles is the basement for the achievement of the perfection in art.

The article was conducted by professional writer �" Olivia Adamson. She works as a professional writer at freshessay writing service, where you can find her already written stories.