Language of Art and Design - Essay Example

We must learn to do this before we can learn about interpretation and the meaning of various art works.1 We have to know how to walk before we can know how to run very fast. Firstly, we need to look at the physical parts of a work of art – how do we name and describe the visual facts? To do this we need a basic vocabulary. These are terms that can be applied to a work of art in any of the forms of art, be it photography, sculpture, or painting—these are the things we first see.2 The first thing we see is the medium, the material used in the work of art.

Medium also refers to dimension as well. Is it two dimensions or three dimensions? Is it a painting on a piece of canvas or on a wood? Is it a sculpture in clay or charcoal? What kinds of paints are used? Acrylic, oil, watercolour? These factors all add to the effect of the creation. To understand the creation we must understand the many parts that make it up. Another important building block: One of the first rules of geometry is a line. A line the “path of a point moving through space.” It can be used to draw the eye to important parts of a composition.

Lines also mark divisions between different spaces. You could say they are the basic “building blocks” of shape and form.3 Colour is another important one. Everything that we see from nature to fashion to our favourite football team impacts our brain with the exciting colours available in our world. Colour effects our emotions in both subtle and unsubtle ways. Without it, our daily life experiences would be dull as dishwater. Think how much our eyes are more drawn to a colourful magazine than to a black and white newspaper.

The artist is sensitive to these issues and takes the use of color seriously, making serious choices for a various effects. For example, Matisse was a master of using colour and created some of his best paintings using the colour red. As with colour, light makes