hello everyone in this video we're going to learn about the elements of art so the elements of art are a lot like the ingredients of a recipe it's basically all of the things that we need to put together in artwork so for an actual definition the elements of art are the building blocks of art so another analogy we could think of is kind of like in chemistry the chemical elements like oxygen and nitrogen and carbon those are the building blocks of life those are the smallest pieces of our universe that could have put everything together and create new things so in art the elements like line color value shape texture those things are the smallest elements that we have in artwork and we put those together to create an artwork so let's talk about our first element of art line so a line is something we're very accustomed to we write with it we draw with it but simply put a line is a mark with length and direction so what are some words that we can use to describe some different types of lines let's look at this image by jean-michel basquiat and see what kinds of lines that we can find you might see some straight lines straight lines here there's curvy lines there's jagged lines there's hatched lines where we see multiple lines kind of in a row there's scribbly lines there's zigzag lines we've got kind of curly cue lines and even some drippy lines so we can use all kinds of adjectives to describe lines in artwork now line variation when we talk about line variation we're talking about using a variety of thin and thick lines or very the weight of a single line to create interest so when I talk about line weight I'm talking about how thick or thin it is so if we vary the weight of a single line we might start very thin and then make it get thicker in the middle and then thin again at the other end so we're going to look at an artwork by illustrator Kim Jong Chi so when we look at his inked artwork here how is he using line variation in this image we can see examples of some thicker lines along with lines that start thick at the edge and get thin towards the end here we see thicker lines that follow the outside edges and thinner lines on the inside so he uses a wide variety of line variation to help create interest in this image now contour lines are probably some of the first lines that we draw when we start to learn about art so contour lines are lines that follow the outer edges of an object they're kind of like an outline so when we look at these drawings by Eagan Sheila he uses contour lines a lot in his artwork so we can see how the lines are primarily just following the outer edges of the subjects that he is drawing whether it's buildings or people and what's interesting about his use of contour lines is sometimes he kind of stops drawing them so we have sort of empty spaces and our brain kind of fills in those gaps to figure out what's going on in between those faces another type of contour is blind contour so it doesn't mean that we close our eyes when we're drawing but it does make us blind in kind of a different way and blind contour would be drawing contour lines without looking at the paper so when we do that it forces us to really look at the subject that we are drawing so we stare intently into the soul of whatever it is we're drawing maybe it's a person it's gonna make them really uncomfortable because your eyes never leave them when you're drawing them and what's really fun about blind contour is they usually turn out looking pretty goofy so as you can see here things are not usually in the right place but that's what makes them really fun to look at and fun to do it's usually pretty amusing to look down and see your artwork after doing a blind contour drawing so all those these may look really messy they are actually really important because they help us see like an artist so we're following the edges with our eyes and we're starting to get those sort of spatial skills that we need when we're drawing in order to draw things realistically so it's kind of good practice to get into the habit of doing blind contour maybe even just as a warm-up before you do any sort of regular drawing well we're going to move on to the next element of art and the next element is value so when we talk about value I don't mean things like oh that's expensive or family values right this is a different type of value so an art value is the lightness or darkness of something so is it black gray white those aren't values how light or dark things are so here we see an example of some value scales so a scale of values would just be going from light to dark or dark to light so value just tells us whether things are light or dark or somewhere in the middle and that leads us into our next element of art which is color so how do we see color this is kind of a science question what we need in order to see color is a light source to shine it's beautiful rays down and it's going to hit an object whatever that may be and that spectrum the light spectrum if you remember white light is a combination of all of the colors put together so as that white light shines down onto an object parts of that spectrum bounce back so the parts that bounce back end up in our eyes and then all those cones and rods do all their little sciency stuff and interpret the color and it sends all of those little brain waves to us and it's like oh hey that's a color let's simplify that a bit I'm not a scientist clearly but color is basically seen by light reflecting off of an object that's a lot easier what are some words that we can use to describe different colors first of all hue would be the name of a color think things like red or blue or green or turquoise or mauve the next word that we can use to describe colors would be intensity so intensity is either the brightness or the dullness of a color we can also call this saturation so if a color is really intense and vivid and bright then it would be very saturated if it's very dull and dingy it would be d saturated so it would not have a lot of intensity to it but when we look at artworks we can use all kinds of different adjectives to describe colors so here we have two very different artworks by Janet skates and Hannah Woodman so when we look at Janet's Cades art what words could we use to describe these colors without naming the hues we could say they're very bright they're intense they're vivid they're saturated perhaps we could say they're playful or happy colors if we look at Hannah Woodman's painting we might consider her colors maybe muted or neutral or saturated maybe they're darker some areas are bright you could say some of the colors are dull so there are lots of different adjectives that we can use to describe colors now let's talk about another element of art and that is space so when we talk about space we're not talking about outer space we are talking about the space inside of an artwork so space in art would be the area around above or inside an object now there are two types of space there's space that involves depth so how far things go back or forward in space and then there's also space that involves the shape of areas in an artwork so the first kind we're going to talk about involves depth so with shallow space there's not much depth in the artwork so if we think like a puddle is kind of shallow meaning you don't go down very far in it right so there's not a lot of depth to it in an artwork when we have shallow space objects are close together without much room to move around so here are a couple artists with artworks that involve shallow space Andy Goldsworthy and Ichikawa Kunisada so very different artists for sure but when we look at their artworks we can see that we can't go very far into the artwork it kind of stops it's almost like it hits a wall the objects or in Kuni seeta's artwork the people are very close together it feels kind of cramped and you can't go very far back into the picture it feels kind of flat when an artwork feels flatter then it would be considered shallow space so if shallow space means that there's not a lot of depth in an artwork what do you think deep space means clearly it would be the opposite so deep space means there's a lot of depth in the artwork and when we look at artworks with deep space we tend to see objects disappearing far in the distance so it feels like there's a lot of room to move around you can maybe frolic in the artwork so we're going to look at two more our works by the exact same artists but this time they're incorporating deep space so when we see Andy Goldsworthy zart we see these objects going far in the distance same with Kuni see does the figures have a lot of room to move around as they're having their snowball fight and we see the landscape going even further back in the distance so there's a lot of depth taking place in these images now the second type of space that we're going to talk about is no longer about depth per se but it's about kind of the shape of the areas of space in an artwork so that would be positive space and negative space so when we talk about positive space we're talking about the areas of focus and those are the important parts of an artwork so generally the things that the artist wants you to look at first that would be the positive space whereas negative space would be the space around the areas of focus and that's usually the background of an artwork so we're going to see a fun example of positive and negative space in graphic design so you may have seen the FedEx logo before some of you may already know what I'm about to say but when we look at the logo so the letters themselves would be the positive space so they're the areas of focus however the person who designed this logo did something clever with the negative space so the way they arranged the letters and kind of put them together to create this logo ended up creating an arrow between the E and the X as you can see right there so once you see it you can't really unsee it right so what's clever about that is you know arrows tend to imply motion and FedEx is a shipping company so when you look at this logo your brain sees that arrow whether you know it or not and it might subconsciously think to itself oh they must ship or things really fast I don't know why I think that but clearly I think that for some reason and it's because your brain notices that space that arrow there and thinks about motions so you're like wow so basically graphic designers are messing with your brain and that's pretty wild all right we're going to look at an artwork by MC Escher to to talk about positive and negative space so Asher was really a master of playing with positive and negative space in what we he calls his tessellations so as we go across the image whether from right to left or left to right what originally is the negative space slowly transforms into the positive space of the image and he does this and a lot of his different artworks and just to kind of mess with your brain so he liked to create a lot of different illusions in his artwork another element of art is shape and form let's take a look shape would be on the Left form is on the right so what's the difference between the two well shapes are two-dimensional and forms are three-dimensional so when we look at a shape it has two dimensions it's got height and width whereas a form has three dimensions so it has height width and depth that's the primary difference between the two one is flat one has volume to it now there are two ways of describing shapes and forms and that would be the terms geometric and organic so when we think about geometric lines shapes and forms we see them as being masked medical and they often have hard sharp edges with the only exception being circles and spheres so circles and spheres are considered geometric because they don't really exist in nature or at least perfect circles and perfect spheres don't really exist in nature there's always some kind of inconsistency in them so that's why we consider them in geometric shape or form so when we think about geometric shapes and forms we think of math so squares and rectangles and circles and ovals and triangles and stars maybe we have hexagons and heptagons and octagons and nonagon donnagon is my favorite word I love it when we think about geometric forms perhaps we have a cube or a pyramid or a cone sphere maybe we want to get crazy and have some polygons or icosahedrons or dodecahedron so that's also one of my favorite words those dangerous dodecahedron you gotta watch out for them so geometric involves those math shapes anytime you think of something you learned in geometry geometric all right now organic we're not talking food when we talk about organic lines shapes and forms we are talking about similar to organic food in that it's natural so organic lines shapes and forms are natural or freeform and they tend to have curvy or soft edges so let's look at a few examples a lot of times when we look at or or try to describe organic shapes or forms we don't really have words for them they're usually just blobby shapes or blobby forms or you know weird I don't have words for whatever that is it's a thing that is very natural so when we talk about organic things we don't usually have name for them now let's talk about our last element of art for today and that is texture so what is texture it's how something feels or appears to feel now there are two categories of texture and so when I talk about categories of not saying like adjectives for describing how something feels but just different types that we would describe and the first is actual texture and that's texture you can actually feel so for example if I were to touch my shirt it feels soft right or if I were to run my hand across the sand on a beach it's going to feel kind of gritty or maybe I'm playing with slime and it's gonna feel squishy and slimy so that's how things actually feel now a lot of times in two-dimensional art especially we have something called visual texture and that is texture you can see but you can't feel we also call this implied texture so we're implying that it feels like something but it doesn't actually feel that way so I'm going to give you a pop quiz this is an artwork by Damien Hirst it is a diamond-studded human skull quite a bit morbid also quite a bit expensive now is this skull visual or actual texture it's actually a trick question it's a visual texture because we can see the sharp of B and hard texture of those diamonds but if we tried to touch it we'd actually just feel the smoothness of the screen in front of us oh I got you but if you were actually in the gallery where it is displayed you could actually feel it but you'd probably get escorted out in handcuffs if you did so moral of the story it's visual texture you can see it but you can't feel it so that's all I have for you for the elements of art hopefully you learned some valuable vocabulary that you can use in your next discussion about art with your friends thank you for watching have a great day