Reading Assignment #1; There will be a quiz!

Art 105: Two-Dimensional Design

Professor: Kyle Stevenson

Project 1 Vocabulary: Points and Line

Reading: Pipes- Intro to Design, Preface, Part 1: Elements, Prologue, Chap. 1 (you WILL be quizzed on this stuff next week)

General Design Vocabulary:

Design:
The planned arrangement of visual elements on which artist base their work; it is often synonymous with the term composition

Drawing:
An artwork in which line is the predominant element; a preparatory sketch for a painting

Graphic Art:
Two-Dimensional artworks based on line and tone rather than color, such as drawings and prints; the crafts and techniques of printing

The Vocabulary of Point and Line:

Point:
In mathematics, a point has no dimension, it is just a position in space.  In art and design, we have the dot, dab, or blob.  Like the breadth of a line, the size of a point is not usually its most important attribute.

Line:
The path a point makes as it moves across a surface.  In mathematics, a line joins two or more points.  It has length and direction, but no width.  In art, lines have breadth, but this is not their most important parameter.  In graphic design, line art means black or another single color, with no other values or colors.

Line Quality:
A characteristic of line determined by its weight, direction, uniformity, or other features

Stippling:
A method for producing areas of value by clustering small dots or points

Hatching:
Drawing several thin (usually parallel) lines close together to create an area of value

Cross-Hatching:
Superimposing hatched lines at right angles to the initial hatched lines, to build up value and to suggest from and volume.

Tesserae:
Small cubes of colored marble or glass used to make mosaics, from Latin tessara meaning “square tablet.”

Contours:
The lines within an outline that give an object its volume, such as the hoops around a barrel.  Sometimes used synonymously with outline.

Cross-Contour:  A line that crosses and defines the surface undulations between, or up to, the outermost edges of shapes or objects.

Outline:
A real or imaginary line that describes a shape and its edges or boundaries.

Implied Line:
An imaginary line created by arranging points or short lines in such a manner that our brains join them, for example, a dotted or dashed line.  With lines that appear to stop, start, and disappear, the missing portions are implied to continue and are completed in the mind of the viewer.

Psychic Line:
A mental connection between two points or elements.  An imaginary ray of flight joining, for example, a person’s eye to the object they are looking at, or the line that extends into space from the tip of a pointing arrow directing the viewer’s eye to follow it.

Explicit line:
A line or edge within which forms are clearly delineated: it may not always be a black line, but it has clear and distinct edges that stand out from the background.

Gesture (drawing):
A free line within and around a form showing the dynamics of a scene or pose, the action of drawing, and the movement of the eye rather than a tight arrangement of shapes.

Lost and Found Edges:
Where edges are sometimes hard and sharp against a background, and sometimes are soft and blurred, receding into the background.  Now you see them, now you don’t.

Bridge passage:
Where two adjacent parallel planes are graduated in opposite directions, from dark to light and light to dark, there will be an area where differences of value dissolve.

Wireframe:
A mesh of points and planes in space, as found in computer graphics,  which can convincingly describe solid forms.  Produced using a 3D modeling program or by laser-scanning a 3D object or body.