PAU Graphic-Plastic Expression Techniques (Madrid) cheat sheet

Visual communication encodes a message in three layers: referential (what is shown), connotative (what it suggests) and aesthetic (how it is formed).

Sign model (Peirce): icon resembles its object, index has a causal or physical link, symbol depends on convention; a single image can combine all three.

Signifier/signified (Saussure) separates the material support (line, stain, pixel) from the concept it evokes; meaning arises from their relation, not from either alone.

Graphic-plastic signs (colour, texture, form, composition) carry expression; iconic signs carry representation. Plastic elements can contradict the iconic message to produce irony.

Reading order is governed by visual weight: high contrast, large size, saturated warm colour and human faces are fixated first.

Poster communication requires legibility at distance: minimum 3:1 luminance contrast between text and ground, and a single dominant focal point.

Image-text relation types: anchorage (text fixes ambiguous meaning), relay (text adds new meaning), and redundancy (text repeats the image).

Graphite hardness scale runs 9H (hardest, lightest) to 9B (softest, darkest); HB is the midpoint. Harder grades suit precise line, softer grades suit tonal mass.

Charcoal: vine/ willow gives soft smudgeable tone, compressed charcoal gives dense blacks, charcoal pencil gives controlled detail; fixative is required because charcoal is not self-binding.

Ink techniques: hatching (parallel lines), cross-hatching (intersecting sets), stippling (dots), and dry brush (broken texture). Line density, not line weight alone, controls value.

Watercolour works transparently from light to dark: white is reserved paper, not pigment. Wet-on-wet produces diffused edges; wet-on-dry produces hard edges.

Gouache and acrylic are opaque and allow light-over-dark correction; oil dries slowly and permits blending, while acrylic dries fast and seals the layer.

Chiaroscuro builds volume with a single light source and a defined terminator; tenebrism pushes most of the image into deep shadow with a narrow lit area.

Support preparation matters: sized paper limits absorption; toned grounds (mid-value) let the artist work toward both light and dark simultaneously.

Subtractive primaries (pigment): cyan, magenta, yellow. Additive primaries (light): red, green, blue. Mixing all subtractive primaries approaches black; mixing all additive primaries gives white.

Complementary pairs neutralise each other: red-cyan, green-magenta, blue-yellow. Mixing complements lowers chroma and produces greys and browns.

Munsell dimensions: hue (family), value (lightness 0-10), chroma (saturation). A colour is fully specified only by all three.

Simultaneous contrast: a colour shifts appearance toward the complement of its surround. Grey on red reads greenish; grey on green reads reddish.

Successive contrast (afterimage) produces the complementary colour after sustained fixation, roughly 10-20 seconds.

Colour temperature: warm hues (red, orange, yellow) advance and appear larger; cool hues (blue, green) recede. Aerial perspective uses cool desaturation for distance.

Harmony schemes: monochromatic (one hue, varied value/chroma), analogous (adjacent hues), complementary (opposites) and triadic (three hues equidistant on the wheel).

Rule of thirds divides the frame into a 3x3 grid; placing the subject near an intersection increases dynamic tension versus dead-centre symmetry.

Golden ratio is approximately 1.618:1; the golden rectangle can be subdivided into a square plus a smaller golden rectangle, generating a logarithmic spiral.

Visual weight increases with size, saturation, isolation, high contrast, and placement in the upper or right portion of the frame in left-to-right reading cultures.

Balance types: symmetrical (mirror, stable, formal), asymmetrical (different masses balanced by position or intensity), and radial (elements radiating from a centre).

Depth cues in a flat image: overlap, relative size, linear perspective, height in the picture plane, texture gradient, atmospheric perspective.

Negative space is an active compositional element; equal figure-ground weight produces ambiguity, unequal weight produces clear hierarchy.

Leading lines and sight lines direct the eye; converging lines create a vanishing point that anchors perspective depth.

Gestalt laws: proximity (near elements group), similarity (like elements group), closure (gaps are filled), continuity (aligned elements read as one line), common fate (shared motion groups).

Figure-ground organisation is the first segmentation step; reversible figures (Rubin vase) show that assignment is not fixed.

Constancy phenomena: size, shape and colour constancy keep perception stable despite retinal changes; they cause errors in judging drawn proportions.

Pictorial analysis grid: describe denotation, then connotation, then plastic elements (colour, light, texture, framing), then context of production and reception.

Visual hierarchy is read through contrast, scale, position and colour; a page with more than three competing emphasis levels loses legibility.

Optical illusions used in art: Muller-Lyer (line length), Ponzo (perspective size), Kanizsa triangle (illusory contour from closure).

Depth perception is binocular (convergence, retinal disparity) and monocular (accommodation, motion parallax, pictorial cues); drawing relies on the monocular set.

Orthographic projection (dihedral system): plan, elevation and profile views projected onto mutually perpendicular planes; Spanish notation uses alzado (front), planta (top) and perfil (side).

Isometric axonometry: three axes at 120 degrees, equal foreshortening on all three; dimetric and trimetric vary the axis angles and scales.

Cabinet and cavalier perspective are oblique projections: the front face is drawn true shape, depth recedes at an angle, usually halved in cabinet.

Conic perspective: one-point (front face parallel to picture plane), two-point (vertical edges parallel), three-point (verticals converge, used for tall buildings).

Vanishing point location depends on the direction of the receding lines, not on the object's position in the frame.

Standard constructions: perpendicular bisector, angle bisector, tangent to a circle from an external point, and the geometric mean (altitude) construction for proportional division.

Scale drawing: representative fraction 1:50 means 1 unit on paper equals 50 real units; enlarging increases the denominator's inverse, so 1:20 is larger than 1:50.

Bauhaus (1919-1933): unity of art and craft, geometric primary forms, sans-serif typography, functional design; key figures Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy.

De Stijl (1917 onwards): Mondrian and van Doesburg, orthogonal grids, primary colours plus black and white, elimination of the curve.

Russian Constructivism: Rodchenko and El Lissitzky, diagonal composition, photomontage, red-black-white palette, typography as image.

Swiss/International Typographic Style (1950s): grid systems, Helvetica, asymmetric layout, photography over illustration, objective clarity.

Pop Art (1950s-60s): Warhol and Lichtenstein, mass-media imagery, Ben-Day dots, screen printing, repetition and seriality.

Art Nouveau: organic whiplash curves, floral motifs, integration of typography and ornament; Mucha and Gaudi. Art Deco: geometric stylisation, stepped forms, streamlined symmetry.

Cubism (analytic then synthetic): multiple viewpoints in one plane, fragmentation, then collage and flat synthetic shapes; Braque and Picasso.

Project workflow: brief and constraints, research and moodboard, thumbnail sketches, roughs, comprehensive layout, final art, then proofing and output.

Resolution rule: print uses 300 ppi at final size; screen uses 72-96 ppi. Halving print size doubles effective ppi for the same pixel count.

Colour modes: RGB for screen, CMYK for process print, spot (Pantone) for exact brand colour; converting RGB to CMYK shifts saturated hues and must be proofed.

Bleed is 3 mm beyond the trim edge in European print; crop marks sit outside the bleed, and safe margins keep text at least 5 mm inside the trim.

File formats: vector (SVG, AI, EPS) scales without loss; raster (JPEG, PNG, TIFF) is pixel-based; PDF/X is the standard print-ready exchange format.

Legibility rules: body text 9-12 pt, line length 45-75 characters, leading about 120 percent of type size, and contrast ratio at least 4.5:1 for small text.

Portfolio and evaluation criteria: conceptual coherence, technical control of medium, compositional clarity, and consistency between intention and result.