Author: Neftaly Malatjie

Repetition works with pattern to make the artwork seem active. The repetition of elements of design creates unity within the artwork.

Pattern uses the art elements in planned or random repetition to enhance surfaces or paintings or sculptures. Patterns often occur in nature, and artists use similar repeated motifs to create pattern in their work. Pattern increases visual excitement by enriching surface interest.

The modes he describes include the following which are described here in terms of examples from nature. However, each of these modes can also be seen in examples of designed objects and works of art:

Flow All things flow, following paths of least resistance. Flow can be seen in water, stone, the growth of trees. Meander patterning is related to the idea of flow, and is built on the repetition of an undulating line. In this detail from a textile hanging made up of knotted threads, the meandering color lines resulting from the technique quite naturally create this type of pattern.

Branching is an obvious form of patterning in the plant world, but it can also be seen in geological formations such as river deltas and certain crystalline formations.

Spiral patterns can be seen from the scale of galaxies to the opening “fiddlehead” buds of ferns, to the forms of microscopic animals.

Packing and Cracking refers to the way in which compacted cells define each others shape. A densely packed cluster of mushrooms will grow together, deforming the circular form of each cap because of crowding. In the same way a cluster of soap bubbles deforms each bubble from the perfect sphere of the isolated bubble, according to rules that govern the surface tension of soap bubbles. Surfaces (like mud or old paint) that shrink may experience cracking, resulting in similarly cellular patterning.

Perspective is created through the arrangement of objects in two-dimensional space to look like they appear in real life. Perspective is a learned meaning of the relationship between different objects seen in space. Is the dark rectangle in front of a circle, or beside a semi-circle? Perspective adds realism to a visual image. The size of a rectangle means little until another object gives it the size of a desk, or the size of a building. Perspective can be used to draw the audience into a visual. Perception can be achieved through the use of relative sizes of objects, overlapping objects, and blurring or sharpening objects.

Colour has three properties. The first is hue, which is the name of the colours. The primary hues are yellow, red, and blue. Secondary colours are made by mixing two primaries. Intermediate colours are mixtures of a primary and adjacent secondary colour. The second property of colour is value, which refers to the lightness or darkness of hue. The third property of colour is intensity, which refers to the purity of the hue (also called “Chroma”).

Value is defined as the relative lightness or darkness of a color. It is an important tool for the designer/artist, in the way that it defines form and creates spatial illusions. Contrast of value separates objects in space, while gradation of value suggests mass and contour of a contiguous surface. In the drawing on the right, value contrast separates the artichoke from the background, and the separate leaves from one another, while gradation suggests the curves of leave surfaces and of the whole form.

Hue also has value. When contrasting hues are made similar in value, the spatial effects are flattened out. The pair of images on the left demonstrate this. In the color image of the fashion model the coat draws our attention through contrast of hue although the skin tones blend with the background (remember the object of the image is to sell the coat, not the model). However, it also seems to be softly blending with a background that seems quite close, and is very similar to the coat in value. The face tends to blend with the background which is similar in both hue and value. In the black and white version, however, the coat virtually disappears, since only value, not hue, are available to distinguish it, and the values are quite similar. However, the strong value contrast of the eyes and hat draw our attention to the face, even though the contours of the face seem to melt into the background. Therefore, the black and white version emphasizes the model more than the garment.

To summarize: If values are close, shapes will seem to flatten out, and seem closely connected in space; none will stand out from the others. If values contrast, shapes will appear to separate in space and some will stand out from the others. This works whether the colours are just black, white and grey, or whether hues are involved.

Hue is the term for the pure spectrum colours commonly referred to by the “colour names” – red, orange, yellow, blue, green violet – which appear in the hue circle or rainbow. Theoretically all hues can be mixed from three basic hues, known as primaries. When pigment primaries are all mixed together, the theoretical result is black; Therefore pigment mixture is sometimes referred to as subtractive mixture.

The primary colors consist of three hues from which we can theoretically mix all other hues. There are two commonly used definitions of primary colors:

Painters Primaries – red, blue, yellow: This traditional definition of primaries does not in fact mix to clear greens or purples; it is based on 19th century theories.

Printers Primaries – magenta, cyan (turquoise), yellow: This definition of primaries mixes to clear colours across the entire spectrum. It is used as the basis for color printing. The computer screen probably does not give you a true turquoise–the colour should be a blue-green– because of differences between colour mixture in pigment and colour mixture in light.

In mixing colours hues can be de saturated (reduced in purity, weakened) in one of three ways: mix with white to lighten the value (tint), mix with black to darken the value (shade), or mix with grey or the complement to either lighten or darken the value ( tone).

Compliments are colours that are opposite one another on the hue circle. When complements are mixed with one another in paint, the resulting muted tones de saturate or dull the hues. Such opposite pairs can also be compared in terms of their relative warmth and coolness. Warm-cool contrast of hue can cause images to appear to advance or recede. In this 15th century painting, for example, the warm reds of the man’s doublet and his son’s cap reinforce the cues of placement to make these figures seem very close. On the other hand, the cool tones of the sea and sky suggest great distance.

Afterimage is another, more specific definition of complements consisting of a stimulus colour and its physical opposite generated in the eye by exposure to the stimulus colour. Afterimage colours tend to make each other appear more intense, and have vibrating boundaries.

A line is a mark made by a moving point and having psychological impact according to its direction, weight, and the variations in its direction and weight. It is an enormously useful and versatile graphic device that is made to function in both visual and verbal ways. It can act as as a symbolic language, or it can communicate emotion through its character and direction

Line is not necessarily an artificial creation of the artist or designer; it exists in nature as a structural feature such as branches, or as surface design, such as striping on a tiger or a seashell.

It can function independently to suggest forms that can be recognized, even when the lines are limited in extent. This can be seen in drawings such as the Saul Steinberg illustration shown here, or in Alexander Calder’s minimal wire sculptures, which convey a great deal of information about the figure with the most limited line.

Lines can be combined with other lines to create textures and patterns. This is common in engravings and pen and ink drawings such as the one on the right (click and enlarge to see linear detail). The use of line in combination results in the development of form and value, which are other elements of design.

However, line is not always explicit. It can exist by implication, as the edge of forms. As young children we usually begin drawing landscapes by making outlines for earth, sky, and other objects. Gradually we learn that objects do not have such outlines and we let color changes define the edges of shapes, creating implicit lines. Thus we can speak of a horizon “line,” or the “lines” of a car or a fashion silhouette, even though we know there is no literal line present. For additional visual examples of