About This Course: A variety of media and techniques are experienced in this studio. You will learn about the fundamental elements and principles of visual art and design, art history, creative aesthetics, and how to conduct a critique. This foundation course will equip, inspire, and encourage you to become visually literate, and you will apply this literacy using a variety of media and writing skills. The first week of each semester will be spent studying composition, the basic building blocks of the visual arts.
Semester One: Elements
Composition (Part 1), Line, Color, Value, Shape, Form, Space, and Texture
Semester Two: Principles
Composition (Part 2), Balance, Unity, Contrast, Emphasis, Pattern, Movement, and Rhythm
Overview: Design is everywhere in nature and the human environment. There are more opportunities for training our judgment, stimulating our visual curiosity, and adapting our creative ideas for our personal use than we could ever exhaust. Nature, with its almost unlimited supply of forms, is a great source to begin a study and application of the elements and principles of design.
Almost as important as the elements and principles of design are the media. These are the materials that an artist chooses to help express his or her ideas. And every medium has its own special quality whether it be paints, inks, papers, or wood. Every art has its tools. Just as writers use the elements of language (such as nouns and verbs) as their tools for saying things, artists and designers use the elements of line, color, value, shape, form, space, and texture as their tools for expressing ideas visually. These tools are the means of making visual statements.
There are no special rules for putting together the various elements of design, but there are principles. These principles are general guidelines and sensible directions that have worked for a very long time. These principles are balance, unity, contrast, pattern, emphasis, movement, and rhythm. They can be studied, modified, juggled, and used to help create effectively. Best of all, they work equally well in all media and in all artistic activities, from painting on canvas to planning a city park.
You will never know whether a design is successful or unsuccessful, strong or weak, uplifting or depressing, engaging or distracting, unless you take the time to look at and think about design in your world and in the work of others. In order to gain this knowledge and apply it you will start by examining the works of experienced professional artists and designers.
Another way to improve your skill and artistic thinking is to stop and take another look at the thousands of objects that are a part of your daily life. You may not have realized it, but every time you wear one piece of clothing rather than another, decorate your wall with one poster instead of another, prefer a particular car, or piece of furniture to another, you are judging the elements and principles of design.
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SEMESTER 2: The Principles of Design
WEEKS 19 and 20: BALANCE
Jan. 30 - Feb. 10, 2012
Objectives: Students will be able to identify and demonstrate the various principles of balance in visual art. Procedures: Step 1 - Read vocabulary definitions. Step 2 - Identify each type of balance in the provided examples. Step 3 - Create two separate designs with ink and color, one using symmetrical balance and one using asymmetrical balance. Use a full page of your sketchbook for each composition. Materials: Sketchbook, drawing pencils, colored pencils, markers, eraser, compass, ruler. Vocabulary: Symmetrical Balance, Radial Symmetry, Exact Symmetry, Axial Symmetry, Asymmetrical Balance, Approximate Symmetry. Assessment: Each section is worth five points for a total of twenty. Criteria 1: (Procedures) Followed directions for the project accurately. Criteria 2: (Effort) Took the necessary time to develop and complete the project without rushing to get it done. Criteria 3: (Craftsmanship) Demonstrated skillful use of the tools, media, and concepts. Criteria 4: (Neatness) The work is neat, clean, and complete. References: Morris Louis "Point of Tranquility" (painting), John Knight (stained glass of St. Peters Church in Chatham, Massachusetts), Kenneth Noland "Yellow Half" (painting), Barkley L. Hendricks "Miss Johnson" (painting), George Segal "The Gas Station" (plaster and mixed media), Raymond Duchamp-Villon "Le Grand Cheval" 1914 (bronze sculpture), Utagawa Kuniyoshi "The Great Wave" (woodcut), Robert Cole (musical instruments), Paul Caponigro "Redding Connecticut" (photograph), The Rose Window at Notre Dame (1194-1220).
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