This important element of design, especially in painting and drawing, allows the artist to create the illusion of light through value contrast. If you take a black and white picture of a colorful scene, all you are left with are the values. Colors also have value for example, yellow has a high value while blue and red have a low value. White is the highest or lightest value while black is the lowest or darkest value. The more light that is reflected, the higher the value. Value deals with how light reflects off objects and how we see it. Lightness and darkness are known as value in visual art. Photography, paintings, and drawings use visual texture to create a more realistic appearance. Optical texture is when the illusion of physical texture is created. This can include surfaces such as metal, sand, and wood. Different techniques can be used to create physical texture, which allows qualities of visual art to be seen and felt. There are two ways we experience texture, physically and optically. Texture refers to how an object feels or how it looks like it may feel if it were touched. It can also be used as tone, pattern, light, movement, symbol, form, harmony, and contrast. Given that, we can use color to create mood. Color also has the ability to work within our emotions. The lightness or darkness to a color is the value. A high chroma color is more pure and less greyed than a low chroma color. Brightness and chroma refer to the intensity and strength of the color. Hue is the name of a color (red, yellow, and blue, etc.). There are three properties of color: hue, brightness or chroma, and value. There are two main types of curves, a simple "C" curve as well as a more sinuous "S" curve. In photography, curved lines can give graduated shadows when paired with soft-directional lighting, which usually results in a very harmonious line structure within the image. They are also generally more aesthetically pleasing, as the viewer associates them with softness. Straight lines are also strongly influenced by tone, color, and repetition concerning the rest of the image.Ĭompared to straight lines, curves provide a greater dynamic influence in a picture. Changing the air only by some degrees or some centimeters lines in embodiments can vary tremendously, and a distinct feeling can be transported. This change of perspective elicits a different response to the image.
The viewpoint of visual art is fundamental because every different perspective views different angled lines. Firmly turned, almost diagonal lines produce tension in the picture. Tightly angled convergent lines give a dynamic, lively, and active effect to the image. An image filled with strong vertical lines tends to have the appearance of height and grandeur. Horizontal lines, commonly found in landscape photography, can give the impression of calm, tranquility, and space. Ī line's angle and its relationship to the frame's size influence the perspective of the image. Many lines without a clear subject point suggest chaos in the image and may conflict with the mood the artist is trying to evoke. The artist may exaggerate or create lines, perhaps as part of their message to the viewer. Lines can also direct attention towards the main subject of the picture or contribute to the organization by dividing it into compartments. Oblique lines convey a sense of movement, and angular lines generally convey dynamism and possibly tension. Subject lines contribute to both mood and linear perspective, giving the viewer the illusion of depth. Movement is also a source of lines, where the blurred movement renders as a line. Lines can also derive from the borders of different colors or contrast or sequences of discrete elements.
These could be literal lines such as telephone and power cables or rigging on boats. Such elements can be of dramatic use in the composition of the image. The viewer unconsciously reads near the continuous arrangement of different elements and subjects at varying distances. The optical illusion of lines do exist in nature, and visual arts elements can be arranged to create this illusion. Lines are optical phenomena that allow the artist to direct the eye of the viewer. Patterns in the frosted glass form leading lines which help draw in the viewer's eye in this photograph of a ledge in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.