Art Appreciation

CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 3: Art Vocabulary: Art Terms and How to Use Them, The Joy Of Art: How to
Look At, Appreciate, and Talk About Art, 2020: 40-73.

1. Elements of art are the basic concepts every artist must deal with whether she does so
consciously or not.

2. Elements of art are light or value, color, line, shape, form, space, and texture.

3. Artists use all of these elements, but often excel in one or more.

4. Light is the number one reality the artist deals with.

5. Light is the natural agent which makes all visible.

6. Lighting, which refers to an artificial source of illumination.

7. Artists who work outdoors and paint the light are called en plein air painters

8. En plein air was a specialty of the Impressionists.

9. In a realistic painting, you can find the source of light by studying the shadows.

10. Shadow is a dark area or shape created when something is in the path of the source of light.

11. If the shadow is on the right of an object, you know the light has come from the left.

12. A camera copies the areas of dark and light.

13. Copying the areas of dark and light creates the appearance of objects, of three-dimensional form.

14. Gamut is the range of lights and darks.

15. A long gamut from a very light light to a very dark dark produces a more dramatic effect,

16. A short gamut is a collection of very close middle tones produces a more subtle effect.

17. Painters can reproduce many shades of a color by adding white to a hue or color.

18. The lightness of a hue is called its value.

19. Artists make hues (color) and values (darks and lights), shapes, lines, and textures to create the
illusion of objects.

20. In the history of art, paintings have gone from the shadows up.

21. The history of art is a march from the darkness into the light, an evolution of consciousness.

22. Shading is how artists describe shadows in their work.

23. Linear texture is a type of mark-making to represent a texture or surface quality of a work of art.

24. Crosshatching is making a pattern of marks that cross to depict a shaded area

25. Stippling is shading with dots that are very close or dense to those that are airier.

26. Graffito is a technique using little scratch marks.

27. For Claude Monet, light was his very subject, and the objects he described only an excuse to paint
the light.

28. When light strikes something, it reflects back to the eye as color.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 3: Art Vocabulary: Art Terms and How to Use Them, The Joy Of Art: How to
Look At, Appreciate, and Talk About Art, 2020: 40-73.

29. A painter adds white to a color create a tint.

30. A painter adds black to create a shade.

31. A color is only a particular wavelength of light.

32. Lightness or darkness of a color is called its value.

33. The primary, secondary, and tertiary color (hues) in a myriad of values (light) create a seemingly
endless array of colors.

34. Palette is another word for a selection of colors.

35. Palette is also defined as the color scheme an artist may choose.

36. A limited palette, where the artist chooses just a few colors in a schema to execute his work

37. A full palette, the use of a whole array of colors from which the artist makes his choices

38. Muted, minor, primary, sweet, neon, soft, and cold are words used to describe the color.

39. The color wheel is a representation of the hues in a circle.

40. ROYGBIV is an acronym for red orange yellow green blue indigo violet.

41. The complementary colors are opposite one another on the wheel and are said to, as the name
suggests, enhance one another

42. The analogous colors lie next to one another and work together in more subtle relationships.

43. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue and are called primary because no other colors
can be combined to form a primary.

44. When we mix the primaries with one another, we get the secondary colors of orange, green,
and purple.

45. Mixing a primary with a secondary will give you a tertiary color, blue-green, yellow-green, red-
orange, red-purple, bluepurple, and yellow-orange.

46. The feeling of the color in a work of art depends upon a number of factors and varies
with the texture of the surface used.

47. The chroma is how pure the hue is.

48. The saturation is the transparency or opaqueness.

49. The intensity is how bright.

50. The value is how light or dark.

51. The feeling of the paint includes the hue, value, application, surface, and the palette or color
scheme.

52. Paint can be mixed with oils and other thinners to appear transparent.

53. Glaze is done when one color can be layered over another.

54. Impasto is done when paint is thickly applied to lay on top.

Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 3: Art Vocabulary: Art Terms and How to Use Them, The Joy Of Art: How to
Look At, Appreciate, and Talk About Art, 2020: 40-73.
.
55. How an artist applies paint is part of his signature and gives his work the singular look and feel
you recognize as his.

56. Local color very closely imitates the colors we perceive them.

57. Imaginative color presents colors we usually do not associate with an object.

58. Art is personal expression and rules were made to be broken.

59. Carolyn Schlam’s Girl with Green Eyes shows many hues that are nonlocal to create a face

60. A line is a dot that moves.

61. The dot moving in a direction creates the line, which can be thick or thin, and stop wherever it
wishes.

62. A line with paint might be called a stroke or a brushstroke.

63. A line can be tender or bold, elegant or clumsy.

64. A contour drawing basically captures the outline of a figure or form.

65. A continuous line drawing is a variant of the contour drawing wherein the artist’s line follows
the outline without stopping.

66. A gesture drawing uses quick expressive lines to nail the character or attitude of a subject without
much detail.

67. Pierre Bonard’s Garden had a joyous palette that shows vivacity and beauty.

68. Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was a French visual artist known for his use of color.

69. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is a master of line.

70. French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting of the barmaids and dancers of Paris
is a painted drawing.

71. What an artist leaves out is just as relevant as what he includes.

72. Juan Gris and his fellow Cubists simplified form into interlocking shapes.

73. Juan Gris is a master of shape.

74. Like Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris was more interested in design and composition than copying objects
in an imitative manner.

75. Juan Gris’s Still Life with a Guitars shows pronounced and interesting shapes.

76. Shape is a flat enclosed area created when a line returns to its starting point.

77. A shape can be geometric, like a square or circle, or it can be organic, free-form.

78. A shape is flat. If it contains the third dimension, we call it a form.

79. A shape is imaginary, as there are no shapes in nature.

70. A shape is a basic building block for an artist.

81. Artists often begin a composition by breaking down what they see into shapes.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 3: Art Vocabulary: Art Terms and How to Use Them, The Joy Of Art: How to
Look At, Appreciate, and Talk About Art, 2020: 40-73.

82. A form is a three-dimensional object that occupies space and has volume.

83. A form can be geometric, like a ball or box, or it can be organic, like a sculpture.

84. By utilizing perspective, artists create imaginary space.

85. By using shading and modeling, artists create imaginary form.

86. Where the light hits directly, the artist creates a highlight, the lightest value.

87. Where the light illuminates but indirectly, the artist makes use of a mid tone,

88. Where the object obscures the light, we have a shadow.

89. Reflected light reflect back on the object of interest by other objects in the vicinity.

90. Like Paul Cézanne, an artist breaks up an apple into shards of value to make it appear round.

91. Space is the illusion of depth on a flat surface.

92. The foreground are the elements of the picture appear that come forward.

93. The middle ground are the elements of the picture that seem to live in the middle.

94. The background are the elements of the picture that go to the back.

95. Warm colors like red and yellow come forward.

96. Cool colors like green, blue, and purple seem to recede.

97. Paul Cézanne’s Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair shows how the pieces of paint working
together create the roundness and weight of the form itself.

98. Paul Cézanne is a master of paint.

99. Masaccio (1401-1428) was one of the first to use linear perspective in his painting, employing
techniques such as vanishing point in art for the first time.

100. Linear perspective was one of the major breakthroughs of the Renaissance.

101. Linear perspective was discovered by Brunelleschi, and later codified by the architect Alberti
in his treatise On Painting, published in 1435

90. Linear perspective was first applied by Masaccio in his Trinity Altarpiece (1428).

91. Masaccio Perspective is another term for the vanishing point.

92. Positive space, for an artist, is the space occupied by the object.

93. Negative space is the space of the air around it or within it.

94. Albert Bierstadt is a master of aerial perspective.

95. Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak (1863) shows how the colors fade
as they describe the deep space.

96. Artists can create an imaginary space without the use of objects.

97. By using lines and shapes, an artist can create a sense of space based on their size, position,
value, and color.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 3: Art Vocabulary: Art Terms and How to Use Them, The Joy Of Art: How to
Look At, Appreciate, and Talk About Art, 2020: 40-73.

98. Texture is the feel of the surface.

99. Virtual, optical, or implied texture is where the paint imitates an actual texture.

100. Actual or physical texture is where the artist adds substances into the paint, like salt or sand,
or actually attaching differently textured materials to the surface.

101. Vincent van Gogh’s Shoes (1888) shows the artist’s attention to the shape and texture
of these shoes to make them come alive.

90. Vincent van Gogh walked through the mud in old worn-out until they were filthy and interesting
enough to paint.

91. Imitation is also called verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true or real.

92. Artists drawing from life may use the paint to imitate the texture of the object.

93. Mixed media is when an artist uses different media in the same work, we define that work.

94. Van Gogh was famous for his brushstroke technique, which made all of the objects in his works
seem to vibrate.

95. Painters and sculptors express their feelings and thoughts in the choices they make
—the subjects they choose, the color, line, shape, texture, etc. of every stroke.

96. An artist may use the big brush to say power.

97. An artist may decide on the limited palette to express the somberness of the narrative.

98. Feeling for a visual artist means the use of all of his senses—sight, hearing, taste, touch,
and smell—to express himself.

99. The percept is the totality of what the artist’s senses and emotion bring to his work.

100. The concept is the mental contribution that identifies and names what the artist is trying
to communicate.

101. It takes both percept and concept to make art.

102. “Perceptual” art is derived from the senses.

103. “Conceptual” art is derived from an idea.

104. Composition is how an artist takes all the elements of art we have discussed and then places
or arranges them to create his work.

105. Balance is the equilibrium or stability of a design.

106. Symmetrical balance is when its two halves are identical.

107. Asymmetrical balance is when they are not identical but seem to work anyway.

108. Radial balance or as the parts relate to a central point like a mandala or flower.

109. An artwork can be purposely unbalanced or discordant for emphasis.

110. Emphasis is when elements are not equal.

111. Emphasizing some and minimizing others delivers the message of the work and tells you
what is important to the artist.
Art Appreciation
CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY

Carolyn Schlam, Chapter 3: Art Vocabulary: Art Terms and How to Use Them, The Joy Of Art: How to
Look At, Appreciate, and Talk About Art, 2020: 40-73.

112. Contrast is placing different elements against one another or in opposition to one another,
like one dark and one light, creates emphasis and interest.

113. A dark shape makes a light shape even more noticeable.

114. An artist can make something in his picture stand out by emphasizing some and minimizing
other elements.

115. Although it is a still image, a drawing or a painting can suggest movement.

116. Rhythm is created via repetition of lines and shapes and intensities of color and line.

117. Pattern is when linear or color features are repeated

118. The patterning can add to the rhythm, balance and harmony of the piece.

119. Proportion is the relative size of elements in relation to one another.

120. Certain artists like El Greco, Giacometti, and Modigliani elongate parts of a figure for effect.

121. Harmony or unity is when the elements of an artwork are working together.

122. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste.

123. The word “aesthetics” literally means “pertaining to the senses.”

124. We use our senses to determine our conclusive “sense” of what is beautiful, or not.

125. “Beauty is the eye of the beholder” means there are no definitive standards that determine
whether something is beautiful or ugly.

126. Beauty or ugliness is a conditional judgment and can never be verified or conclusive.

127. When we look at an artwork, we attempt to relate to and understand the artist’s vision,
to commune with it, to decipher what it has to offer, and to share this with others.