OAE Art (006) cheat sheet

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

Value describes the lightness or darkness of a color; a value scale of 10 steps from white to black is a standard reference.

Hue is the color family name (red, blue, green); intensity/saturation is its purity; value is its lightness.

Primary colors in subtractive (pigment) mixing are red, yellow, blue in traditional theory, or cyan, magenta, yellow in modern process theory.

Complementary colors sit opposite on the color wheel and neutralize each other when mixed; analogous colors sit adjacent and share a hue family.

A tint is a color plus white; a shade is a color plus black; a tone is a color plus gray.

Implied line is a visual path the eye follows (e.g., a gaze or gesture) even without a drawn contour.

Positive space is occupied by the subject; negative space is the surrounding area, and both carry compositional weight.

Warm colors (red, orange, yellow) advance visually; cool colors (blue, green, violet) recede, creating depth cues.

Prehistoric cave painting (Lascaux, Altamira) uses mineral pigments (ochre, charcoal) applied to limestone walls, often depicting animals.

Ancient Egyptian art follows the canon of proportion and frontalism: head in profile, eye frontal, shoulders frontal, legs in profile.

Greek pottery periods: Geometric (bands, meander patterns), Black-figure (figures in black slip with incised detail), Red-figure (background black, figures reserved in red).

Medieval manuscript illumination includes Carolingian, Ottonian, and Gothic styles; gold leaf and tempera on vellum are characteristic.

The Renaissance shift to linear perspective is codified by Alberti's 1435 treatise De pictura, building on Brunelleschi's demonstrations.

Baroque art (17th century) emphasizes dramatic chiaroscuro, diagonal composition, and theatrical light (Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt).

Impressionism (1870s) uses broken brushwork, plein-air painting, and optical color mixing; Post-Impressionism extends it with structure or expression.

Non-Western traditions include ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Islamic aniconic geometric and calligraphic ornament, and African masquerade sculpture influencing Cubism.

Twentieth-century movements in sequence include Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism.

Fresco (buon fresco) applies pigment in water to wet lime plaster; the setting plaster chemically binds the pigment (calcium carbonate).

Tempera binds pigment in egg yolk emulsion; it dries fast, is opaque, and is applied in thin layers over a gessoed panel.

Oil paint uses a drying oil (linseed, walnut) as binder; it allows blending, glazing, and slow reworking.

Watercolor uses gum arabic binder; transparency, wet-on-wet, and reserving white paper are core techniques.

Acrylic uses a synthetic polymer emulsion, dries quickly, and can mimic watercolor or oil handling.

Intaglio printmaking (etching, engraving, drypoint, mezzotint) cuts below the plate surface and requires damp paper and high pressure.

Relief printmaking (woodcut, linocut) prints from the raised surface; the cut-away areas stay white.

Lithography is planographic, relying on the repulsion of grease and water on a limestone or metal plate.

Serigraphy (screen printing) forces ink through a mesh with a stencil; it is a stencil process, not a matrix-cutting process.

Four standard critical operations: describe (what is seen), analyze (how elements/principles are used), interpret (meaning), and evaluate/judge (quality against criteria).

Aesthetic theories include imitation (art as mimesis), formalism (significant form), expressionism (art as feeling), and instrumentalism (art as social function).

DBAE (Discipline-Based Art Education) organizes instruction into aesthetics, art criticism, art history, and art production.

The National Core Arts Standards address Creating, Presenting/Performing/Producing, Responding, and Connecting.

Assessment in art education commonly uses rubrics, portfolios, and process journals rather than single-product grading.

Art criticism models include Feldman's four-step sequence (description, analysis, interpretation, judgment).

Museum and visual culture approaches ask students to consider context, audience, and function, not only formal qualities.

Additive color mixing (light) uses red, green, and blue primaries; all three at full intensity produce white.

Subtractive color mixing (pigment, print) uses cyan, magenta, and yellow primaries; mixing all three approaches black.

The Munsell system describes color by hue, value, and chroma; the Ostwald system uses a hue circle with white and black content.

Simultaneous contrast: a color appears to shift when placed against a different surrounding color.

Afterimage: staring at a color produces its complement as a negative afterimage due to retinal adaptation.

Successive contrast and optical mixing (as in Pointillism) rely on the viewer's eye blending adjacent small color marks.

Color temperature (warm/cool) is relative, judged against neighboring colors rather than fixed absolutely.

One-point perspective uses one vanishing point on the horizon; two-point uses two; three-point adds a vertical vanishing point for looking up or down.

The horizon line corresponds to the viewer's eye level; objects above it show their undersides, objects below show their tops.

Foreshortening compresses forms along the line of sight to convey recession.

Chiaroscuro models volume through light and dark; tenebrism uses extreme dark-light contrast for drama.

Gesture drawing captures movement and mass quickly; contour drawing traces edges; cross-contour describes form with wrapping lines.

Rule of thirds places key elements along imaginary thirds lines for dynamic balance.

Atmospheric (aerial) perspective reduces contrast, saturation, and detail with distance.

Sculptural methods: additive (modeling with clay, assembling), subtractive (carving stone or wood), and casting (lost-wax bronze).

Bas-relief projects slightly from a background; high relief projects at least half its depth; freestanding sculpture is in the round.

The lost-wax (cire perdue) process: wax model, investment mold, wax burnout, molten metal pour, mold break.

Architectural orders: Doric (plain capital), Ionic (volute capital), Corinthian (acanthus-leaf capital).

Post-and-lintel, arch, vault, dome, and cantilever are structural systems that shape architectural form.

Gothic architecture uses pointed arches, ribbed vaults, flying buttresses, and stained glass.

Craft media include ceramics (slab, coil, wheel-throwing; firing and glazing), fiber, metal, glass, and wood.

Photography's invention (Niépce, Daguerre 1839; Talbot's calotype) shifted painting away from literal documentation.

Cubism (Picasso, Braque, c. 1907–1914) fractures form into multiple viewpoints; Analytical precedes Synthetic Cubism with collage.

Dada (1916–1920s) uses readymades and absurdity to reject traditional aesthetics; Duchamp's Fountain (1917) is the key example.

Surrealism explores the unconscious through automatism and dream imagery (Dalí, Magritte, Ernst, Miró).

Abstract Expressionism splits into gestural Action Painting (Pollock, de Kooning) and Color Field (Rothko, Newman).

Pop Art appropriates mass-media imagery and commercial techniques (Warhol's silkscreens, Lichtenstein's Ben-Day dots).

Conceptual art prioritizes the idea over the object; Minimalism reduces form to essential geometric elements and industrial materials.

Formative assessment occurs during learning (critiques, sketches, exit tickets); summative assessment occurs at the end (final portfolio, rubric score).

A rubric names criteria and performance levels; analytic rubrics score criteria separately, holistic rubrics assign one overall score.

Portfolio assessment documents growth over time and supports self-reflection and revision.

Studio safety rules: proper ventilation for solvents, no eating in the studio, correct disposal of solvents and glazes, eye protection for carving.

Differentiated art instruction offers varied entry points (choice of media, scaffolded prompts, flexible pacing).

Visual literacy instruction teaches students to read images for subject, symbol, context, and purpose.

Cross-curricular connections link art to history, math (proportion, symmetry), and science (pigments, light).