The visual elements of an image

Isabel Rivera Galicia

ART 1st ESO bilingüe

The visual elements of an image are:

PointLine

ShapeTexture

The point is the BUILDING BLOCK of art.

The focal POINT is THE PLACE YOU LOOK AT FIRST in a drawing, painting, etc.

When we see 2 POINTS they become a LINE

When we see 3 POINTS they become a TRIANGLE

point

A line is a mark made by a MOVING POINT

It can be THICK and THIN. 

Types of line:vertical, horizontal, diagonal and contour lines.

line

line

HORIZONTAL line suggests a feeling of REST or REPOSE.

line

Vertical lines communicate a feeling of spirituality. Erect lines seem to extend toward the sky. Cathedrals usually have vertical lines.

line

Diagonal lines suggest a feeling of movement or direction and are unstable.

line

Form and shape are areas or masses which define objects.

Form and shape can be organic or geometric, two dimensional or three dimensional.

shape

Organic forms are irregular in outline, and often asymmetrical. Organic forms are very common in nature.

shapeOrganic

Geometric forms are those which correspond to named regular shapes, such as squares, rectangles, circles, cubes, spheres, cones, and other regular forms. Architecture, is usually composed of geometric forms.

shape Geometric

The areas that are flat are called Shapes. Two dimensional form is the foundation of pictorial organization or composition in painting, photography, and many other media.

shapeTwo dimensional

(2D)

The areas that have Volume are called FORMS. Three dimensional shape and space is the basis of architecture and most designed objects.

shapeThree dimensional (3D)

The surface quality or "feel" of an object, its smoothness, roughness, softness, etc.

Texture

• TACTILE TEXTURE is the actual 3D feel of a texture. Tactile means touch. Painters like Van Gogh can use sand in their pant to get a texture on their painting.

• VISUAL TEXTURE refers to the illusion of the surface's texture. It is what tactile texture looks like (on a 2D surface). The textures you see in a photograph are visual textures. No matter how rough objects in the photograph look, the surface of the photograph is smooth and flat.

Texture

Texture