ART What is it? What does one need to create it? What does it take to create it? What does it mean? Does it even have a meaning? These are some of the common questions asked when it comes to the word ART and there really is no one answer to that question. Instead there are thousands depending on the person and what the person sees art as.
The Different Tools of the Trade
Pencil - The most common thing people use today to create or start out an idea is a pencil. It's one of the oldest methods still used and is probably still the most popular of them all.
Charcoal - It is great for sketching and can be smudged easily. You can find it in sticks, in a chalk like form, and in pencil.
Pastel - It is a very dry material, basically like colored chalk, and when one is done using it the work comes out to look like a colored picture more or less.
Ink - In the cultures of Japan, China, India, and other countries surrounding that area (when emperors were still ruling) ink was the main source used. It is primarily the same way today that it was back then. One can produce washes by adding water to the ink. The more water you use, the lighter gray you will get.
Ink
Painting Media - This is, out of the different tools used, the most well known because of its massive popularity with people as far back as art goes and with modern day society as well.
Acrylic - This has been, for the most part, growing in popularity since the last half a century. It is easy to be thinned, cleaned up, used on basically any surface and dried quickly.
Oil - We all have heard of and most likely have seen a oil panting. Oil paintings were the easiest material to get a hold of during the major art movements and the easiest to master.
fresco painting
Fresco painting - This is the oldest and most difficult out of all the others to master, but was part of a greater movement when painting the chapels and such. Today one can't find someone that easily who is a master at it.
Tempra - This form is nearest to poster paints and today is mostly used in class rooms with younger aged students. Some artists though will work with small brushes and build up layers of transparent color to create a majestic work of art.
Watercolor - Everyone has most likely experimented with water colors as a child. At first it was only used to create a plan for an artist's work until one artist, by the name of Winslow Homer, used watercolor to create full vibrant works of art that were finished and not just "plans" for some other work.
watercolor
Printmaking
Serigraph Printmaking
Woodcut Printmaking
Printmaking - There are various techniques to printmaking, which at the beginning, were used to furnish art to the masses of people at prices that they themselves could afford.Woodcut - This is called a relief print. The image is on the plate and projects or sticks up from the surface.
Intaglio prints - These are made from the lines or crevices in a plate. To produce the design, one makes lines and scratches or a type of etching or scratching drypoint and then ink is forced into the grooves by rubbing. The rest of the plate is then wiped clean.
Linocut - This is also a relief printmaking medium that produces an image similar to a woodcut. Cuts are made smooth, on the even surface of the linoleum and ink is rolled over the remaining surface. Rusting prints can either be fine or jagged depending on the artist's wishes and style.
Lithograhs - These may appear textured, flat, black-and-white, or full color; that all depends on the artist though. The artist draws a design on a limestone slab with a greasy crayon or ink. Water is then spread over the stone. Then a large barrier is used to roll greasy ink onto the surface because grease will not mix with the ink and sticks only where there is no water.
Serigraph - It is the newest form and the media is silkscreen printing. It requires a screen of silk or similar material stretched on a frame. A stencil is attached to the silk and ink is forced through the stencil with a rubber squeegee.
Sculpture - We all know what sculpture is and have seen some forms of it. It can be made of any of the following materials: bronze, steel, wood, marble, or plastic.
Collage - Most peope have seen or done a collage themselves. It's basically glueing down different pictures of anything one wants on a background to form something, express one's feelings, or say something. It was started by Picasso and one of his many friends. Today among teens is where you can find it's popularity the most.
Fibers - That would basically be clothing, blankets, rugs, tapestries, etc. Among the Indians is where one saw massive popularity of this going on for the first time.
Glass - At one time glass was so rare it was easy to think of it as a precious material. Now, with so much of it, it is hard to think that way. But glass blowing, an art media, lets one create pieces which are amazing to the eye.
Clay - This is truly the oldest and the most well known in my opinion. It's so easy to create something out of clay, yet one has to have talent to do it.
Mosaics - These can really be made of anything like beads, glass, wool, paper, marble, bits of wood, bits of cermic, or seeds. They can mostly be seen in churchs and such.
The Elements of Design
Line - They are everywhere. They create all shapes. They can be 2-or 3-dimensional. Lines are the foundation.
example of line
Shape - If a line crosses itself, then it creates a shape. These only have 2-dimensions. They are organic like squares, triangles, cicles, or free form like an irregular.
Form - This the three-dimensional and enclosed volume. Form can be geometric or irregular like shapes. It's the volume or mass of objects of sculptures.
Texture - It's the way something feels to the touch, or it could be simulated texture and made to look like it has texure but when one feels it, it does not.
differnt types of texture
Persective - It refers to the illusion or actual space in a painting, like how things actually look and how things actually overlap and set.
space/persective
Color - It's an art and science that has been placed together. Hue is the name of a color. Value is the light and dark of a color. Intensity is the brightness or the saturation of a color. There are primary colors - red, yellow, and blue. Secondary colors - orange, green, and violet. Complementary colors - yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet blue-green, and yellow-green. Then you have the warm and cool colors; what most of us all know about. Warm - yellow, orange, and red. Cool - violet, blue, and green.
The Color WheelValue - It is the light or dark quality of a color or shape in a piece of artwork.
The Principles of Design
Balance - This is symmetrical. It is the roughly even distribution of visual weight and/or activity. Asymmetrical means large masses on one side are balanced out by smaller contrasting parts on the other side.
Unity - The combining of the principles of design and physical aspects to create a single harmonious work defines uninty.
Emphasis - This is the way of developing a main theme in a work or create questions or answering questions that have already been asked before.
Contrast - The visual difference in the components or parts of a painting or artwork to capture a viewers interest in that piece of work.
Rhythm - It's established when the elements of the compostion are repeated.
Pattern - It's produced by the repetition of motifs, colors, shapes or lines. Patterns are seen in many different cultures.
Movement - This can be conveyed in many ways. Movement in paintings directs the eyes of the viewer to the center of interest. In sculptures, it makes the piece come alive.
Edvand Munch
Hieronymus Bosh
The Tower Of London
Linda Bergkvist
