PPT #1

Visual Literacy
- It is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate,
use, and create images and visual media.
Reading Visual Arts
- It is the ability to read, analyze, and critique works of visual arts
Reading
- the process of forming a perception based on the imagery, form, and language of the
text, translated through the experience.

UNDERSTANDING VISUAL ARTS

Theme
- The meaning of painting, rather than the subject
Mood
- The feeling expressed by the artwork
Tone
- It refers to the lightness or darkness of colors used

KEY TERMS

Aesthetics
- The Philosophical study of beauty and taste
Intuitive
- It is based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning
Fine arts
- a creative art, especially art whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely
for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content.
Form
- Refers to the physical nature of at work
Formalism
- It is the study of art by analyzing and comparing form and style
Human Condition
- It refers to the characteristics and key events that compose the essentials of human
existence, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, conflict, and death.
Mimesis
- A greek word that means “imitation”
- A process of imitation or mimicry through which artists portray and interpret the
world.
Muses
- the sources of inspiration for a creative artist

FOCUS OF ARTS ON DIFFERENT ERAs

Pre-modern/Pre-aesthetic (ancient Greece & Rome)

- It focused on capturing ideal ideas of beauty and the human form.
- Romans were interested in realistically portraying individuals
 - The idealization of the subject matter
- Artists are commissioned by the elite or religious leaders to advance their ideas to
the people.
- Religion took key roles within the visual arts for hundred of years.

Modern/Aesthetic (1700s to mid 1900s)

- Also referred as ‘Modernism’
- More on producing art that was beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning.
- It was viewed as both an art and philosophical movement at the time of its
emergence.
- This movement reflected the immense longing of artists to produce new forms of art,
philosophy, and social structures that precisely reflected the newly developing world.

Postmodernism/Post-aesthetic (mid 1900s to present)

- It focused on ideology in the maintenance of economic and political power.
- Described as a form of art in which artists were able to truly express what they
thought and felt, with pieces from this period typically characterized by complete
freedom from politics and other societal influences.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
- The Renaissance period emphasized skill level and beauty
- Artworks were commissioned by religious leaders/church or by aristocrats for
hundred years
- There was no artistic freedom during the Renaissance period
- Different movement (isms) emerged with varied intentions, purpose, and reasons for
creating the artwork

QUOTES

- According to Plato, art is mimesis, an imitation. He criticized them for not being able
to put ideal realities that he referred to as “forms” or “ideas”. It was just as simple and
poor copy of perfect ideal forms
- According to Aristotle, art was not a mere copying, art idealizes nature and
completes its failures seeking to graso the universal type in the individual
phenomenon.
- According to Jean Pederson, “Maybe it’s enough that each of us interpret what the
artists presents; love it or hate it, it is art and we are all richer for having take the
journey”.

PPT #2

WAYS TO DEFINE ART

Mimesis
- Art is the representation or replication of something beautiful or meaningful
Expression
- Art is the expression of subjective experiences and emotions
Formalism
- Art is the arrangement of lines, colors, shapes, and other aesthetic elements.

DEFINING ART
- art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically
in a visual such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily
for their beauty or emotional power (Oxford dictionary)
- “Art is what you can get away with” (Andy Warhol)
- “Art as either plagiarism or revolution (Gauguin)

DEFINING VISUAL ARTS

- these are art forms that creates primarily for visual perception, as drawing, painting,
sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photogr, video, film making, and architecture.
- It has significant cultural component and aim at communicating ideas, entertaining,
awakening emotions in us, and much more.

DEFINING VISUAL LITERACY

- It is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented
in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies
interpretation of a written or printed text.
- It is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be through a
process of reading.
- The ability to construct meaning from everything we see.

READING VISUAL ARTS

“ The most important mechanism for interpreting visual art is your own eyes and your ability
to see and to really look…Go, stand in front of the work of art, literally, physically, look at it.
Walk around it, look at its texture, look at its colour…” (Gillian Mclver)

- RVA is context dependent (It activate your experiences or general knowledge)

- It is an active process
- It is a cultural trajectory
- It applies selection and omission
- It focuses on one element first, then try to link them into the other elements to create
a meaningful interpretation that will lead to evaluation.

ART CRITICISM
- Art criticism is a structured way of looking at, analyzing, and judging a piece of
art. It helps viewers understand and appreciate artworks more deeply

1. Description
- “What do you see”
- focus on objective observations—what is physically present in the
artwork
2. Analyze
- “How did the artist do it”
 - examine how the elements of art and principles of design are used to
create the artwork
3. Interpretation
- “What is the artist trying to say”
- explore the meaning behind the artwork
4. Evaluation
- “What do I think about this artwork”
- Form a personal judgment about the piece

ROLE OF VISUAL ARTS IN THE SOCIETY

● Cultural preservation
○ help preserve and celebrate a society’s culture, traditions, and identity.
● Inspiration and expression
○ serves as a powerful form of self-expression and inspiration for
individuals and communities.
● Social and political activism
○ Visual arts have historically been a powerful tool for social change and
political awareness
● Historical interpretation
○ Art helps us understand and interpret history by capturing moments,
events, and emotions from different time periods.

“ Visual arts is life in itself”

CLASSIFICATION OF ARTS
● Visual arts - forms perceived by the eye
○ Painting - evoke emotion from the viewers
○ Sculpture- represents an imagines or observed objects in hard
materials
○ Architecture- provide us the structure we loved
● Performing arts - forms in which artist used his/her own body, face, and
presence as a medium
● Literary arts - cebtered on creative weiting and other composition; intended for
reading

FORMAL ELEMENTS OF ARTS

Line
➢ It is the path left by moving a point; it can take many forms
➢ It is a 2-dimensional path through space including length but not width or
depth
➢ It can be thick, thin, horizontal, diagonal, curve, curly, spiral, and zigzag.
Some lines are invisible.
➢ Qualities of line:
 ○ Weight: thin, heavy, bold, delicate, varied
○ Action: dynamic, static, restful
○ Character: straight, curved, organic
○ It can construct, render, describe, divide, and implied
○ May imply direction or movement, define figures, measure, fill shade
etc.
➢ Implied lines: lines that are not physically drawn but are suggested by the
arrangement of shapes, colors, or elements in an artwork. They guide the
viewer’s eye through the composition without being explicitly visible.
○ 1. Create implied lines through characters’ postures, hand positions or
the direction in which they look.
○ Indicate a subtle change of plane by using shadows and interrupted
lines.
○ Use implied lines in still-life and landscape drawings.
Color
➢ Hue: is basically any color on the color wheel
➢ Saturation: the intensity or purity of the color
➢ Luminance: is the amount of brightness or lightness in a color.
➢ Red, yellow, and blue are primary colors —it means they can’t be mixed by
using other colors.
➢ In theory, all other colors can be made from these 3 color.
➢ It is used to portray mood, light, delth, and point of view in a work of art.
○ Secondary color: orange, violet, and green
○ Combining primary and secondary you
Tone
➢ Refers to the lightness or darkness of something
➢ Tone and shading can be used to make 2D look 3D in form
➢ It can be an important tool to produce contrast within an artwork, creating a
sense of opposition and tension between different elements or placing focus
on particular parts of the composition.
➢ Types of Tone:
○ Dark tones: Used to create a sense of drama or darkness.
○ Light tones: Effective at drawing the viewer's attention to a certain
point, especially when contrasted against a dark background
➢ Global tone
○ It is the overall impression of color tha you get when considering the
painting as a whole.
➢ Local tone
○ It refers to the lightness or darkness of a soecific area within the
painting. This may be used to emphasize a particukar subject or area,
or to contrast this to the rest of the artwork
Pattern
➢ It is a design created by repeating lines, shapes, tones, and colors
➢ A repeated arrangement of motifs.
 ➢ A principle of art and the universe itself, a pattern is an element (or set of
elements) that is repeated in a piece of work or an associated set of works.
➢ Artists use patterns as decoration, as a technique of composition, or as an
entire peiece of artwork. Patterns are diverse and useful as a tool that grabs a
viewer’s attention, whether it be subtle or very apparent.
Motif
➢ Design that keeps occuring
➢ A single design element or recurring theme
Texture
➢ It describes the surface quality of something.
➢ Actual texture really exists
➢ Visual texture is created by using marks to represent texture.
➢ It appeals to our sense of touch, which can evoke feelings of pleasure,
discomfort, or familiarity.
➢ Three-dimensional artwork (sculpture and pottery) relies on the material used
like marble, bronze, clay, metal, or wood.
➢ Two-dimensional medium texture may either be real or implied. It can be
enhanced or downplay through the manipulation of light and angle. It could be
smooth, rough, matte, glossy, etc.
Shape
➢ An area enclosed by a line
➢ It can be either geometric like a circle, square or organic shapes.
➢ It is a two-dimensional figure displaying only height and width.
➢ Two major tyoes of shape:
○ Geometric - Shapes that are mathematical and include squares,
circles, and triamgles.
○ Organic - It is asymmetrical or irregular in shape such as blob, splatter,
or spiked shape.

PPT #3

CHARACTERISTICS OF VISUAL ART

Transdisciplinary
- Visual arts move between different disciplines, instead of staying stuck in just one or
respecting the “borders” between them.
- You can use any technique, form or tradition and combine it with any other that is
convenient.
Tends to Appropriation
- Tend to recycle previous or traditional trends and explorations, and to redefine them
with new layers of meaning through ironic interventions and twists.
Global art
- It handles very well in the heterogeneous and contaminated imaginary of
globalization, where few things are considered “pure” or “immovable” and mixing and
daring are valued.
Manage exposure strategies
- Not content with museums and controlled invades the urban.
- It demands a certain collaboration or complicity from him to form the work.

KINETIC ART
- form of art that incorporates movement or gives the illusion of motion. The
movement can be real (mechanically or naturally powered) or perceived
(optical illusion)

CLASSIFICATION OF VISUAL ARTS

Traditional plastic arts

- Painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing, engraving
Visual arts of 20th Century
- Photography, cinema, kinetic art, abstract art, land art (art with the earth or the
ground itself) urban art, graffiti, performance.
Digital or New Age Arts
- Video art (multimedia art), net.art, digital art, fanart and installations (conjunction of
sculpture, painting, and various plastic elements around a given space).

FORMS OF VISUAL ARTS

Representational Art
● Also known as Figurative Art
● Based on real subjects or events (ex.realism)
○ Ex: the Church in Auvers-Sur-Oise by Vincent Van Gogh

Abstract Art
● It draws themes or inspiration from reality and displays them in ways that vary from
how we see the same subjects in our daily lives.
● This might include highlighting lines, forms, or colors that change the topic.
● Cubism, Minimalism, and Precisionism are subcategories of abstract art.
● Abstraction may also occur when artists choose to perceive the subjects in an
unconventional manner. It aims to represent real subjects in a different way from
reality (ex. Impressionism)

Non-Objective Art
● Also known as Non-representational
● It does not depict anything from reality—often mistaken for abstract art.

PRINCIPLES OF ART

Emphasis
● Focal point, center, point of emphasis.

Balance
● It refers to the way lines, shapes, colors, and textures are arranged.
 ● Asymmetrical balance is when the weight on one side of an image or composition is
not equal to the weight on the other.
● Radial Balance
○ Is a symmetry or balance in multiple directions and has a clear central focal
point that extends outwards toward other elements.
○ It doesn't mean everything has to be perfectly symmetrical, but the piece
should feel naturally balanced and harmonized from the center.

Harmony
● Creates cohesiveness by stressing the similarities of separate but related parts.
● Uses the elements of art of color, line, shape, space, texture as a vehicle to create a
sense of togetherness. Harmony does, however enhance unity in a work of art

Unity
● It gives an artwork a feeling of “oneness”.
● Proven methods that ensure a unified composition:
○ Simplicity- Reducing the amount of potential variety.
○ Repetition- Tessellations are examples of how repetition unifies a
composition. A tessellation is an arrangement of shapes that fit together in a
repeated pattern without gaps.
○ Proximity- It refers to the closeness of different components in a work of art.

Variety
● Refers to how artists and designers add complexity to their work using visual
elements.
● Contrast, difference and change, and elaboration all add visual interest to an artist’s
work.
● Different elements are used, like linen shapes, and colors are placed next to each
other in a work of art. They are in contrast to each other giving the picture a lively
quality.
● Variety works through juxtaposition and contrast.

Rhythm
● A principle of design that suggests movement or action.
● It is usually achieved through repetition of lines, shapes, colors, and more.
● It creates a visual tempo in artworks and provides a path for the viewer’s eye to
follow.

Proportion
● An element of art that compares the size of a part of an object in relation to the size
of another part of the same object.
● Using proportion correctly in artwork makes the art pieces more realistic and creates
the perceptive relationships between elements in your composition.
Types of Proportion
● Standard proportion
○ Normal or accurate proportion of parts in visual composition. This will be
visually evident when viewing an artwork.
○ Ex. David (1501-1504) by Michelangelo
 ● Hierarchical proportion
○ To visually indicate importance of some figures or objects, otherwise, the
hierarchy, whether it is familial, social, or in a monarchy, in an art composition.
○ Ex. Nebamun fowling in the marshes (c. 1350)
● Out of proportion
○ When the subject matter of a visual composition is not proportional relation to
one another. Usually done accidentally or purposefully.

3 DIMENSIONAL ART
● The Thinker
○ French: Le Penseur
○ A bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin, usually placed on a stone pedestal.
The work depicts a nude male figure of heroic size sitting on a rock. He is
seen leaning over, his right elbow placed on his left thigh, holding the weight
of his chin on the back of his right hand. The pose is one of deep thought and
contemplation, and the statue is often used as an image to represent
philosophy.
○ Rodin conceived the figure as part of his work The Gates of Hell
commissioned in 1880, but the first of the familiar monumental bronze
castings was made in 1904, and is now exhibited at the Musée Rodin, in
Paris.
○ There are also 27 other known full-sized castings, in which the figure is
approximately 185 cm (73 inches) high, although not all were made during
Rodin's lifetime and under his supervision. There are various other versions,
several in plaster, and studies and posthumous castings exist in a range of
sizes.
● Pieta
○ Italian: [pjeˈta]; 1498–1499
○ a key work of Italian Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti, now
in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City. It is the first of a number of works of the
same subject by the artist. The statue was commissioned for the French
Cardinal Jean de Bilhères, who was the French ambassador in Rome. The
sculpture, in Carrara marble, was made for the cardinal's funeral monument,
but was moved to its current location, the first chapel on the north side after
the entrance of the basilica, in the 18th century.[1] It is the only piece
Michelangelo ever signed.
○ This famous work of art depicts the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother
Mary after the Crucifixion. Michelangelo's interpretation of the Pietà is
unprecedented in Italian sculpture.[2] It is an important work as it balances
the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty with naturalism.
○ In 2019, a small terracotta figure identified as a model for the final sculpture
was displayed in Paris.[3]
● Rizal Monument
○ Located in Luneta it is composed of a standing bronze sculpture of Rizal, with
an obelisk as his backdrop, set on a granite stone base which his remains are
interred inside. The height of the monument is 12.7 meters or 42 feet

COLOR PSYCHOLOGY
 ➢ Also known as Color theory
➢ It is the study of how colors affect human behavior and emotions, and explores the
psychological and emotional responses that different colors evoke in individuals.

Origins of Color Psychology

➢ Egypt, Greece, and China —beliefs that colors possessed symbolic meanings and
social status (due to the rarity of the dyes that used to create them)

Exploration
➢ Carl Jung and Wassily kandinsky
○ Both psychologists began to explore the connection between colors and
human psyche in-depth.
➢ Chakras
○ During the mid and late 20th century, the association of colors with chakras
(energy points used in Hinduism) gave a layer of meaning to the shades of
the spectrum.

Psychological Influence of Color

➢ Fast food: Red and Yellow
○ Stimulating and hunger inducing
➢ Analogous Color
○ Colors that are situated next to each other on the color wheel are known as
analogous colors (ex. Red, orange, and yellow)
➢ Perspective on colors
○ Cultural and personal experiences can influence how individuals perceive and
respond to different colors too.
○ Red: China(Luck, Joy, prosperity)
○ Red: Europe and North America(Aggression, war love, danger)

COLORS ASSOCIATION

● Red: passion, energy, danger, and urgency

● Blue: calmness,trust, and tranquility
● Green: growth, harmony, nature, as well as money and prosperity
● White: purity, cleanliness, and simplicity
● Black: power, sophistication, and mystery
● Orange: enthusiasm, warmth, and creativity
● Yellow: happiness, energy, optimism, and positivity
● Brown: stability, reliability, and earthiness
● Purple: luxury, spirituality, and creativity
● Pink: romance, nurturing, and femininity
● Taupe: sophistication, timelessness, and neutrality

FACTS:
➢ The color of a room can affect our productivity and concentration levels
○ Blue walls: people with fast-paced and demanding jobs are less stressed and
more focused.
➢ Warm colors: Excitement
➢ Cool colors: Calm
➢ Complementary color: colors on the opposite side of the color wheel.