Life Defined by Art

As a visual arts teacher, I am constantly reminded about how much you can learn about life if you view life from an artistic standpoint.

When you are working on an art piece, whether it is a drawing, painting or photograph (play, dance, or even music…) you have to understand the basic principles and elements of art in order to get something that holds the viewer inside the piece. Once you know the rules, you might purposely break one, but it is in the knowing the rules that allows the freedom of creativity.

These “rules”, called Elements of Art and Principles of Design are really just guiding practices as artists have a real problem with being told how to do something and get really cranky when told that maybe they should follow a rule! Below is a list of the elements and principles:

Every art book lists the elements and principles a little differently. But the overall modern interpretation is pretty much the same.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to focus on a few different areas and how they directly relate to life.  If you want to follow along, great.  If not, skip it :)

Here is the list of posts:
Compostion
Balance
Value: Light and Dark