FORMAL ELEMENTS

There are seven formal elements of art; These are COLOUR, FORM, LIGHT, LINE, SHAPE, SPACE, and TEXTURE. In order to look at all these elements in one, I will talk about them by applying them to one of the images I looked at in my scrapbook; Johannes Vermeer's "absolute masterwork" The Girl with a Pearl Earring.

COLOUR
Colour plays a massive part in any piece of art, as it has a direct effect on the viewers emotions. The colours used in this Vermeer painting were few, only 11 in total, but they have an intense effect. They all complement each other and instead of being bright and harsh, they are calm tones that draw your attention against the bone black background. The intensity of colour in the scarf and eyes draws your attention to the face, then to the bright white of the earring.

Pigments used in the Girl with a Pearl Earring...
1. white lead
2. yellow ochre
3. vermilion
4. red madder
5. red ochre
6. brown ochre (raw umber?)
7. charcoal black
8. bone black
9. ultramarine (natural lapis lazuli)
10. indigo
11. weld

LIGHT
Light and dark transfrom a painting, giving the artist the ability to draw the viewers attention to where ever he/she wants. This feature can be used effectively in all types of art- abstract, photo-realistic, colour, black & white etc. In this oil painting, the lighting draws the attention to the focus point of the piece- the pearl.It shows the folds of the material in the models scarf and dress. As a portrait, Vermeer effectively uses light on the face of the model to show the light source and our attention is drawn to this light where the face and pearl stand out against the darkness of the background. The pearl iteself shines brightly out of the shading of the neck area which is hidden from the light. When edited to be made black and white, the lighting can be seen well- and shows how effective it is in the piece.


LINE
Although it is hard to pick out many lines in the painting, they are there. They're not straight up and down, but in art that is not what is always implied by line; Lines can be straight and curved, and may even refer to the outlining of the shape in the image. In this painting, there are noticable lines in the headscarf to indicate folds in material, and curved lines in the dress to . Also line is used to define the jaw of the model- line in this painting has been used both to outline and add detail.

On Adobe Photoshop, I edited the image
(right) to take out the detail and leave only the main lines- these were the strokes in the scarf and the outline of the model and her facial features (the pink shows these features.)

SHAPE
Shape can be a whole host of different things- organic, geometric, flat, 3D, 2D, symmetrical etc. Shape is so important because it expresses so much-
*it keeps order in the work, defining something or calming it, or even making a piece more complex.
*it also gives the image its 'thing'. That sounds a little vague but shape can be ANYTHING so its hard to define how an artist can shape their work. But what it does is it sets the piece apart from others- like Vermeer's painting, which is famous for the composition but which couldn't be without the shapes of the titled oval head, and triangular shoulder towards the viewer.
* the other crucial point about shape is it expresses emotions- how else could abstract be considered art? If the viewer couldn't feel a sense of emotion being portrayed then it would be fair to say that it just looked like a load of scribble!


SPACE
Nothing exists without space, as it is the distance or area around, between, above, below or within places. In art, space can be described as either 2D or 3D.The space in 2D 'flat space' artwork like this Vermeer painting is limited by its height and width. While there is no actual depth or distance in this piece, there are qualities of the work that make the space a noticable feature-qualities such as the immense dark space that makes up the background (made using a combination of black, indigo and weld). Dark backgrounds were largely used in portraiture to isolate the figure from the distracting elements and enhance the 3D effect of the figure.


TEXTURE
Texture can be rough or smooth, soft or hard. In this Vermeer it is implied; it is the surface quality that can be seen and felt. In this painting the texture is visually apparent (seen) rather than physically (felt). The techniques Vermeer used add texture to the material in the headdress and dress of the girl, and the shading and variation in hues outlines folds and creases in this material. An online analysis of the 'working-up' of the 'Girl with a Peal Earring' looks at where Vermeer focused on layering the paint:

On close inspection the headgear is modeled with surprisingly rapid and broad brushwork, laboratory analysis reveals that the illuminated blue part of the turban was executed with a single layer of white lead mixed with ultramarine blue and then successively glazed with a transparent of the same blue with a very small addition of red madder. The yellow ochre garment seems even more abbreviated, if not spuriously, executed. The dark background which was already been set in the underpainting stage was then glazed with a mixture of indigo and welt to achieve a somewhat greenish tonality that has degraded in time. The only area of the painting which may have required considerable time to paint was the face of the young girl. But since only two layers of paint above the dark underpainting have been detected, much of the careful balancing of chiaroscuro may have been achieved in the underpainting phase itself.