Elements of Art and Design for BBC Scotland

How do artists and designers create their compositions? What elements of art and design are they thinking about as they make drawings, posters, paintings, sculptures, buildings, and other pieces? This BBC Bitesize video series by Playdead for BBC Scotland helps introduce and define those elements, including this video about Space.

What is the ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ space of a sculpture or a painting? How does overlap, placement, size, color, and linear perspective help us understand an image? From Playdead:

The films were created to provide students with an understanding of key concepts and language to help them analyse art and design works (including their own) and better equip them with the planning, shaping and creation of their own work and portfolio. We believe that the appreciation and understanding of art can go a long way to understanding media in general which is crucial in a world where images stream constantly into consciousness.

In Balance, below, we see how size, shape, color, texture, quantity, and position influence the visual weight of a composition. Symmetry, asymmetry, and radial symmetry are all reviewed:

Emphasis covers contrast, isolation, placement, convergence, and the art of the unusual to help create a hierarchy of attention:

Pattern discusses motifs of regularity and irregularity, radiating patterns, and gradation.

UK-based viewers can watch the films here: Variety, Unity, Texture, Shape, Space, Movement, Pattern, Proportion, Lines, Rhythm, Form, Emphasis, Colour & Balance.

Follow these videos with more on TKSST: open.edu’s six key movements in design history, how design can change our experiences & environments, Design Ah! introduces kids to design concepts, and the power of creative constraints.

Bonus: Maarten Koopman animates six famous paintings, Caravaggio paintings performed live, and The Challenge of a Straight Line and ‘Making Art Concrete’.