Contemporary Arts Flashcards
refers to the distribution of weight or the apparent weight of the piece. Arches are built for structural design and to hold the roof in place, allowing for passage of people below the arch and creating balance visually and structurally. It may be the illusion of art that can create balance.
Balance
is defined as the difference in colors to create a piece of visual art. For instance, black and white is a known stark contrast and brings vitality tona piece of art, or it can ruin the art with too much contrast. Contrast can also be subtle when using monochromatic colors, giving variety and unity the final piece of art.
Contrast
can be color, unity, balance, or any other principle or element of art used to create a focal point. Artists will use emphasis like placing a string of gold in a field of dark purple. The color contrast between the gold and dark purple causes the gold lettering to pop out, becoming the focal point.
Emphasis
in a piece of art denotes a type of repetition used to either demonstrate movement or expanse. For instance, in a painting of waves crashing, a viewer will automatically see the movement as the wave finishes. The use of bold and directional brushwork will also provide movement in a painting.
Rhythm/Movement
is the relationship between items in a painting, for example, between the sky and mountains. If the sky is more than two-thirds of the painting, it looks out of proportion.
is similar to proportion, and if something is not to scale, it can look odd. If there is a person in the picture and their hands are too large for their body, then it will look out of scale. Artists can also use scale and proportion to exaggerate people or landscapes to their advantage.
Proportion/Scale
conveys a sense of completeness, pleasure when viewing the art, and cohesiveness to the art, and how the patterns work together brings unity to the picture or object.
should provoke changes and awareness in the art piece. Colors can provide unity when they are in the same color groups, and a splash of red can provide variety.
Unity and Variety
is the way something is organized and repeated in its shape or form and can flow without much structure in some random repetition. Patterns might branch out similar to flowers on a plant or form spirals and circles as a group of soap bubbles or seem irregular in the cracked, dry mud. All works of art have some sort of pattern even though it may be hard to discern; the pattern will form by the colors, the illustrations, the shape, or numerous other art methods.
Pattern
