DU Fine Arts Unit cheat sheet

Fine Arts: Visual Elements, Principles, and Art History Essentials

• The seven visual elements are line, shape, form, value, texture, color, and space; principles of design include balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, pattern, rhythm, unity, and proportion.

• Color theory basics: primary colors (red, yellow, blue in traditional pigment theory), secondary colors made by mixing two primaries, and complementary pairs opposite on the color wheel (e.g., red-green, blue-orange, yellow-violet).

• Value is the relative lightness or darkness of a tone; a value scale typically runs from white through grays to black, and chiaroscuro describes strong light-dark contrast used to model form.

• Linear perspective uses a horizon line and vanishing points; one-point perspective has a single vanishing point, two-point perspective uses two, and objects diminish in size as they recede.

• Key Western art periods in order: Prehistoric, Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Medieval/Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, Romantic, Realist, Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modern/Contemporary.

• The Renaissance (roughly 14th-16th century) emphasized humanism, naturalism, and perspective; the Baroque favored dramatic movement, tenebrism, and emotional intensity; Impressionism focused on light and momentary effects painted outdoors.

• Sculpture methods divide into subtractive (carving stone or wood), additive (modeling clay or assembling), and casting (pouring liquid material such as bronze into a mold); relief sculpture remains attached to a background.

• Printmaking types include relief (woodcut, linocut), intaglio (etching, engraving), planographic (lithography), and stencil/screen processes; each produces characteristic marks and edition numbering.

• Architecture essentials: post-and-lintel, arch, vault, dome, and cantilever are structural systems; the Greek orders are Doric (plain capital), Ionic (volute capital), and Corinthian (acanthus-leaf capital).