Exploring and Responding
The art elements and principles are the ‘building blocks’ for creating, making, responding and exploring artworks. Specifically, the art elements are the visual components of art.
The art elements are:
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Line
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Shape
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Form
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Colour
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Tone
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Texture
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Time
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Movement
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Sound
(ECP71 Creativity and the Arts in Childhood, Deakin University, PowerPoint slides, The Elements & principles of Art 2013)
The art principles are the 'organisation' of art elements. Art principles involve the arrangement of the art elements to create artworks.
The art principles are:
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Direction
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Proportion
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Contrast
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Dominance/Emphasis
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Unity
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Balance
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Repetition
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Depth
(ECP71 Creativity and the Arts in Childhood, Deakin University, PowerPoint slides, The Elements & principles of Art 2013)
Why and how the elements and principles are applied in classroom contexts to provide a ‘language’ to describe, interpret and draw meaning from the language of ‘art’
The art elements and principles are applied in the classroom to enable students to interpret and describe visual information. Without the ‘language’ of art and the understanding of the elements and principles, students will be unable to communicate and respond to their own and others art work. Chapman (2015) reinforces that each art form is different and consequently, students must have an understanding of the art ‘language’, so that they can draw inferences and make meaning from different pieces. This can be applied in the classroom context by encouraging students to use the elements and principles to describe their own artworks. Similarly, teachers should use the ‘language’ of art to explain the meaning of various art forms.
Chapman, S 2015, ‘Arts Immersion: Using the arts as a language across the primary school curriculum’, Australian Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 40, no. 9, pp. 86-101, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2015v40n9.5
Resources for Teaching the Elements and Principles
A valuable resource for teaching the elements and principles is the song 'We're going on a Bear Hunt'. Using this resource, children can create artwork based on the texts themes.
Comparing and Contrasting Two Pieces of Artwork
Fiona Macdonald: Guardian II (1988)
Pablo Picasso, Oil on canvas, 1939 p. 130 in Duncan, D (1968) Picasso's Picassos: 1895 Ballantine Books Inc. New York.
Venn diagram to compare and contrast the two pieces of artwork