Painting’s artistic elements

Paintings consist of many artistic elements. The most important elements include color, line, mass, space, and texture. These artistic elements are as important to a painter as words are to an author. By stressing certain elements, a painter can make a picture easier to understand or bring out some particular mood or theme. For example, an artist can combine to produce an intensely emotional feeling. The same artistic elements can also be combined in a different way in order to produce a feeling of peace and relaxation. Color can help an artist tell a story, express an emotion, or – as in Picasso's «Mandolin and Guitar» - created a composition, Picasso did not color all his forms as they would appear in real life. Instead, he used strong primary colors – such as blue, red, and yellow – in the parts of balanced these colors with delicate black, brown, gray, tan, and white colors. The result is pleasing composition created largely by the painter's skillful arrangement of colors.

Line is the chief means by which most artists build up the forms in their pictures. By combining lines of different lengths and different directions, an artist makes the drawing a painting. In «Two Acrobats with Dog», Picasso used lines to show the edges of his figures. Some lines are thick and some are thin. The artist emphasized line to make the viewer aware of the roundness of the forms and the delicacy of the slender figures of the young boys and the figure of the dog.

Mass allows an artist to express the feeling of weight in a painting. Picasso created «Mother and Child» largely in terms of mass. The bulky, solid appearance of figures in the painting impresses the viewer. The artist made the figure look as if they are made of stone or some other heavy materials. By stressing mass, Picasso made the figures seem like monuments that will last a long time.

By arranging lines, colors, and light and dark areas in certain ways, painters can create an appearance of great space – even though they really paint on a small, flat surface. An artist can make an object look flat or solid, and either close or far away. In some paintings, space plays just as important a part as the solid forms. Picasso's «Seated Bather» shows a skillful use of space. The openings between the bonelike forms are just as expensive and interesting as the solid forms in the painting.

Texture refers to the appearance of the painting's surface. The paint of a picture may be thick and rough or thin and smooth. In «Woman Weeping», Picasso created a rough texture by using thick strokes of paint. This texture adds to the painful emotional feeling of the painting.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1138