Elements and Principles of Design
The basic units of any visual design, often referred to as "the ingredients" of an artwork.
Elements of Design
A collective trend where a group of artists shares a common philosophy, style, or goal during a specific era.
Art Movement
A versatile, water-based paint medium composed of pigment particles suspended in a polymer emulsion.
Acrylic Paint
Any Artwork combining two or more contrasting or dissimilar elements.
Mixed Media
Colors on the color wheel associated with heat, light, and energy; such as Red, Orange and Yellow.
Warm Colors
The light that reflects off an object and is perceived by the human eye.
Color
A style of art originating in France in the 1860s where artists depicted an "impression" of the moment, utilizing painterly brush strokes, dots and a heavy focus on light and color.
Impressionism
A reusable gel-like printing surface used for creating monoprints without the need for a printing press.
Gelli Plates
Creating major visual differences between multiple elements, ie: lightness and darkness or textured or smooth.
Contrast
Hues on the color wheel like blue, green and purple that are often associated with feelings of tranquility and calmness
Cool Colors
The building blocks of an artworks' aesthetics, often referred to as the "recipe" for a work of art.
Principles of Design
Art from the late 19th century into the late 20th century that rejected traditional, realistic old master techniques, in favor of more abstracted, experimental and expressive art where the content was inspired by changes in society/politics.
Modern Art
Artists’ paint made with a water soluble binder such as gum, arabic and thinned water rather than oil, giving it a transparent color. Uses water instead of white producing “paler colors”.
Watercolor
A line that divides the sky from the ground or the eye level of the viewer, often parallel to the horizon.
Horizon Line
The basic building blocks of all other colors, meaning they cannot be created by mixing other colors and are used to create a wide range of hues.
Primary Colors
An enclosed line that has is two-dimensional, width and height.
Shape
French Painter from Giverny and founder of Impressionism, who is best known for his garden scenes and other landscapes, particularly famous for his water lily series.
Claude Monet
A printing surface made of foam, used to make prints by drawing in a design and creating a relief, then inking and printing onto another surface.
Foam Plate
A solid, single-color shape representing the outline or profile of a subject against a lighter background.
Silhouette
Muted shades and tints, often lacking intense hues, that don't appear on the color wheel.
Neutral Colors
An element of art that is three dimensional and encloses the physical structure of a shape to include the volume.
Form
American Painter and leader of the abstract expressionist movement known for his "drip technique", which involved flinging paint onto canvases.
Jackson Polluck
a type of ink used specifically for printmaking art, it can be acrylic or oil based, there are different types for different printing purposes.
Printmaking Ink
Objects in front of a composition that usually contain the subject matter.
Foreground
A comprehensive study of how colors interact and affect human perception, providing a framework for creating visually appealing and effective designs.
Color Theory
The perceived surface quality of a work of art.
Texture
An American visual artist who started out as an illustrator and later Led the Pop Art movement through the 60s with his iconic prints and paintings. He is well known for his Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's Soup can art.
Andy Warhol
a powder that gives paint its color.
Pigment
A depiction of natural scenery, such as mountains, rivers and forests.
Landscape
A color with white added to it.
Tint
The lightness or darkness of a color.
Value
A post war American painter, associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, best known for her "color field" paintings. She was one of the few women who was well known among the Abstract Expressionists.
Helen Frankenthaler
A form of printmaking where a unique one of a kind image is created from a single impression.
Mono-printing
The arrangement of elements within a work of art, and how they relate to each other to create a whole.
Composition
Colors that are adjacent to (next to) each other on the color wheel.
A repeated or alternating sequence of elements creating a sense of movement or flow.
Rhythm
A American Artist who's early works anticipated the Pop Art movement, He was famous for his mixed media printmaking as well as his "combines" where he combined painting and sculpture in a new "never been done before" approach for his time.
Robert Rauschenberg
An art form that involves transferring an image from a template, or matrix, onto another surface.
Printmaking
The space in the back of an image.
Background
A color with black added to it.
Shade
The purposeful inclusion of different visual elements and qualities to create visual interest and prevent the artwork from monotonous.
A post WW2 American art movement (40s and 50s) that focused on spontaneous, emotional, non-representational art, with bold gestures, large canvas and inner psychological states over traditional forms.
Abstract Expressionsim
A hand tool used historically in printmaking to break up and roll out ink for application.
Brayer
The area around and between the subject matter in the composition.
Negative Space
A visual representation of colors organized in a circular arrangement, typically showing the relationships between primary, secondary and tertiary colors.
The Color Wheel
The distribution of visual weight in a composition creating a sense of stability and equilibrium.
Balance
An American abstract expressionist from Chicago, who worked primarily in painting and printmaking. Her work is colorful, gestural and expressive. She is best known for her large scale abstract paintings.
Joan Mitchell
A hand tool traditionally used in block printing to apply even pressure to the block and create a crisp even transfer of ink.
Baren
Identifiable subject matter with simplified, altered, distorted, changed or rearranged visual elements.
Abstract
A color resulting from the mixing of two primary colors.
Secondary Colors
The Consistent reuse of visual elements like shapes, colors, lines or textures within a composition often resulting in a pattern.
Repetition
A cutout template with a designed hole to apply paint or pigment onto a surface, allowing for repeated production of images, texts or patterns.
Stencil
A single material an artist may use
Medium
Also known as intermediate colors, they are created by mixing a primary color with an adjacent (next to) secondary color on the color wheel.
Tertiary Colors
The technique of placing two or more contrasting or dissimilar elements side-by-side to highlight the differences and create a pleasing aesthetic.
Juxtaposition
Colors that are opposite of each other on the color wheel.
Complementary Colors
The illusion of a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface, creating the impression of objects appearing closer or farther away from the viewer.
Depth
A color mixed with gray
Tone