The Elements & Principles

Background:
The Elements of Art & Principles of Design are the building blocks of every piece of artwork. 

• The Elements are what make up artworks. (ie: Van Gogh's Starry Night uses COLOR to bring the viewer throughout the piece).
  
  
• The Principles describe how the elements are used. (ie: Van Gogh's Starry Night shows MOVEMENT in the sky, directing the viewer throughout that sky and into the rest of the piece).
  

These sets of definitions describe artwork; artists use these to make their artwork more visually appealing. We also use these words to describe artwork when speaking and writing about art. We will be using the elements and principles throughout the entire school year, and this lesson is just an introduction to them. 

Project Description:
Your assignment is to create an artwork using a quote or word and using multiple elements of art. Students should be able to describe the ways that he/she used each element.

Steps:

1. Choose a short quote (no more than 6 words)
2. In Google Drive, make a new document in landscape format, choose a fun font for your quote. Print it out to the 220 printer in room 409.
3. Divide your paper into sections using 4 straight lines (we will do this together in class).
4. Trace your quote on the paper, making sure that there are words (or pieces of words) in each section.
5. At the TOP and BOTTOM of your paper, mark a dot at 6 inches from the left. Draw a line connecting those dots to each corner, to give yourself 7 distinct sections.
6. Color inside of each section showing 4 elements of art: line, shape, color, texture and 3 principles of design: contrast, pattern, movement.
7. When done, take a photograph of your artwork and submit to Google Classroom and upload onto your Artwork blog page (be sure to write a paragraph about what you did/what the project was about. When photographing artwork, your camera must be parallel to the artwork (ie don't take the image at an angle).

Grading
You will be graded on:

• TECHNICAL QUALITY: The drawing is high quality and each element/principle is labeled on the back in pencil
• DESIGN: Your sections accurately describe each element/principle
• UNITY: How unified your piece is as a whole

This lesson was taken from this great site.

Van Gogh's Starry Night