Getting Started
What Students Want to Know The Elements: The Language of Art
If the secrets of great artists were contained in a book, would you open it? We hope your answer is YES! There is much to learn from artists who have created all their lives. The first great secret artists share with others is:
1. Learn to observe the world around you- to really see it.
“OK”, you say, “I’m looking and I see the same things I’ve always seen.” We won’t let you be stuck there. The second part of this secret is:
2. Learn what to look for.
We tend to look at subject matter and make vague and arbitrary decisions about what we see. Comments such as “grass is green,” “faces are hard to draw,” “I can draw a horse from the side, but not from the front,” all show that we are focusing on the subject and not on what we see. If you’ve ever made statements similar to these, you are simply focusing on the wrong type of information. As you look at the world in the ways artists do, and this book is designed to show you just what those ways are, your art will greatly improve. So do artists really see differently? After all, we all have the same kind of eyes and unless impaired in some way, we see the same as everyone else. Artists have learned to focus on a particular aspect of what they see and at the same time block out other types of information. The language of art includes code words called the elements of art. You may have heard about these elements, which include space, line, shape, texture, form, value, and color. The next secret of artists tells us how to see the world using these elements.
3. Learn to focus on one element of art at a time, while drawing, and block out the others.
With practice, your mind can focus on any element of art you choose. Your mind can switch with lightning speed between elements, making it a powerful focusing and blocking out tool. Each unit in the first section of this book focuses on one element. You will build a working knowledge of how to draw by adding one element at a time. Soon you will be using all of them in your drawings.
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