LAGOS, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA) — I’ll walk you through each of the seven components of visual art. You can choose one or more of the suggestions below as a starting point to continue exploring visual art on your own.
I’ve got a test for you. Find an artist whose work you genuinely like. Take a look at one or more of their pieces of art and consider how the seven elements apply to them. Describe the artist’s use of the various aspects in a diary or essay.
Do they avoid any in particular? How do those components combine to produce excellent art? What alternative ways would you use the seven components if you were working with the artist?
Develop your own by utilizing an artistic medium that you are confident with. This could be a piece of digital art, painting, sculpture, collage, photography, or other forms of art. Consider what components you included and what you omitted as you produce a new work of art.
Try to use each component in your artwork, or just one or two. Try something new by stepping outside your comfort zone!
What Are the Components of Art?
There are seven fundamental components of art that artists might use. A component of a piece of art is referred to as an element and, when combined with other components, forms the entire piece.
No work of art can be done without utilizing at least one of these components, and the majority of artists employ several or all of them when finalizing a piece.
These are the seven components of art:
- Line
- Space
- Form
- Shape
- Texture
- Color
- Value
Each of the seven components of art is crucial to its production. The truth is that all of these components can have equal relevance in the world of art, despite the fact that different definitions of what constitutes art would give one or more of these elements a greater or lesser value. Even though each element is crucial, not all of them will be utilized in every piece.
These are instances where each of the components of art are used. Given that these components are three-dimensional, a sculptor must, by necessity, include both form and space in their sculptures. Through the use of perspective and shading, they can also be made to appear in two-dimensional works.
Without line, also referred to as “a moving point,” art would be lost. Even though it isn’t something that occurs in nature, the concept of line is very necessary for representing objects and symbols and defining forms.
Like form or space, texture is another aspect that can be genuine (feel the back of a coconut with your fingers or handle an unglazed pot), inferred (see Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff paintings), or inferred (via skillful use of shade).
When it comes to those who learn and think best visually, color is frequently the focal point. Let’s continue by taking a closer look at each component.
Line: A Component Of Art
One of the most basic components of art is a line. Marks on paper or canvas are called lines. They can have any shape, including horizontal, vertical, curved, and others. Drawings, paintings, and other two-dimensional art forms are examples of art that uses lines.
One of the reasons why artists frequently spend so much time on line work as practice is that even a few sparse lines can produce an engaging and significant work of art. Popular artists such as Piet Mondrian, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh and Degas have all used lines to create expressive graphite drawings.
Space: A Component Of Art
An intriguing component of art is space. It is the variety in size and shape of a drawing’s or painting’s elements.
This frequently works to provide the appearance of depth on a flat canvas. Overlapping things on the canvas is one technique for giving the impression of depth.
Without using space, painters frequently produce works that appear to be flat or to exist on a single plane, which can be a worthwhile and well-thought-out decision in and of itself.
Some artists have employed space to generate a depth of field that is especially intense in a piece or to change how viewers experience a work of art depending on their vantage point. These artists include Samuel John Peploe, Gustave Caillebotte and JMW Turner.
Hieronymus Bosch employed empty space to trick the eye and make it challenging to determine the intended scale of an image.
Form: A Component Of Art
Form and shape are related in many ways in the art world. A form can be geometric or organic, just like shape. Form, on the other hand, is always three-dimensional, unlike shape.
A form encloses volume and has dimensions of length, breadth, and height. The two types of forms are well-defined (like a cube) and free-form (like an animal).
They can be produced by combining two or more shapes, and they are frequently characterized by the presence of shadow and the interaction of light with it in a work of art. Salvador Dalí, Jessica Dismorr, Andy Scott, Barbara Hepworth, utilizes geometric forms (spheres) to create their images and sculptures in this example of form in art.
Shape: A Component Of Art
The shape is created by joining lines together to encapsulate particular areas. Shapes are frequently organic, which means that they resemble shapes seen in nature and are generally asymmetrical. Geometric shapes, a category of shapes one could encounter in a mathematics textbook, are also used by some painters.
Shapes are typically used in line drawings as well. Samuel John Peploe, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Piet Mondrian are among the artists who made use of distinctive, frequently geometric shapes.
Texture: A Component Of Art
Texture refers to the way something feels. Actual texture and visual texture are the two different types of textures. The appearance of texture is an essential visual component in all forms of art and design.
A product’s function in design can also be influenced by texture. A design’s actual physical surface is referred to as its actual texture or physical texture.
It explains the sensation your hand would feel if you were able to touch an artwork. Depending on the materials an artist chooses to employ to make a piece of art, this sensation may change. It could have a variety of textures, including smooth, bumpy, coarse, and rough.
The materials utilized and the technique employed by the artist or designer result in the real texture.
Applying paint very heavily to a surface is known as impasto. You can notice Claude Monet’s thick application of paint to produce physical or tactile texture in this close-up of Water Lily Pond.
Albrecht Dürer’s portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher appears to have a thick fur-like texture, although it is actually made of oil paint.
Many of Vincent Van Gogh’s works of art include dense textures. He applied heavy layers of oil paint to the canvas of Noon (The Siesta, After Millet) (1890) in an expressive style. This results in an artwork with a raised surface and a rough texture.
Color: A Component Of Art
Color is the visual property of the pigment of an object that is detected by the eye and produced as a result of the way the object reflects or emits light. The human eye is capable of seeing millions of colors, making it one of the most diverse and powerful elements of art. Each color has three properties—hue, value, and intensity.
Hue is the name of a color. Value is a color’s lightness or darkness, which is altered when black or white is added. Intensity refers to the intensity of a color, often measured by boldness or dullness.
Red, yellow, and blue are the three primary colors. They cannot be created by combining different colors. The basic colors are positioned on the color wheel equally spaced apart. Red, yellow, and blue can all be combined with any other color. In his artwork, Piet Mondrian frequently used primary colors. The solid blocks of color in compositions with yellow, blue, and red (1937–42) are not very large. Still, in contrast to the white background and the black grid lines, they stand out boldly since they are vivid, pure primary colors.
Tone: A Component Of Art
Tone can be used for a range of effects, like the illusion of form, an atmosphere, focusing attention, contrast, and finally, the suggestion of depth and distance.
When describing tone in painting, different contrast levels are frequently used to indicate the lightness and darkness of the colors. Black is the darkest color, while white is the lightest. The artist mixes in white to give a color a tint. The artist mixes in black to get a shade.
In this illustration of tone in art, Rufino Tamayo tints the women’s clothing, one of the baskets, and the checkerboard on the wall by mixing white with a color.
Components of Art and Principles of Design
The principles of design used in graphic and visual design are fairly similar to the visual components of art, as mentioned. Graphic designers frequently combine both principles of design and components of art in their work. The principles of design and components of art are the fundamental pieces that make up an artwork.
Most works of art will incorporate many, if not all, of the components and principles of art. We often evaluate the quality of art based on how well the artist utilizes these design fundamentals, even before we know about them.
The building blocks of a work of art are its components. They are the tools that artists use in creating their masterpieces, and principles of design are how those building blocks are arranged. The basic principles of design include:
- contrast
- rhythm
- proportion
- balance
- unity
- emphasis
- movement
- variety
These are the ways an artist may organize the components of art and design principles to produce a variety of effects. Each of these principles of art is closely related to the others, and many of them overlap. Combined together, they result in a full artistic vision.
Tips for Using Components and Principles of Art
All of the components and principles of art require practice to apply properly, but they can all yield outstanding results. To determine what components of art will be most useful, there are a number of questions one may ask. For illustration: What medium will the artwork be made from? Will this artwork have two or three dimensions? How big or small can the artwork be? What will the artwork portray?