Visual Literacy Skills: How to See [7012]

Table of contents :
Professor Biography......Page 3
Table of Contents......Page 5
Course Scope......Page 7
Lesson 1—Visual Power: What It Is and Why It Matters......Page 9
Visual Choices......Page 10
Slow Observation......Page 11
Lesson 2—Seeing as a Skill......Page 14
Process 1: How People See......Page 15
Process 3: Function and Context......Page 16
Representation, Abstraction, and Symbolism......Page 18
Lesson 3—Sensing and Perceiving: How You See......Page 20
The Physiology of Seeing......Page 21
Vision in the Brain......Page 22
Gestalt Principles......Page 23
Lesson 4—Should You Believe What You See?......Page 26
Cognitive Functions......Page 27
Optical Illusions......Page 28
Frank Lloyd Wright......Page 29
Interior Design......Page 30
Lesson 5—Representation and Illusion......Page 32
Ways of Seeing......Page 33
Drawings......Page 34
Lesson 6—Elements of Visual Syntax......Page 36
The Design Principles of Art......Page 37
Visual Syntax: The Damascus Room and the Magic Garden......Page 38
Visual Syntax: The Peacock Room and a Studio......Page 40
Conclusion......Page 42
Lesson 7—Visual Foundations: Dot, Line, and Shape......Page 44
Dots......Page 45
Shapes......Page 46
Lines, Shapes, and Dots in Action......Page 48
Lesson 8—Visual Foundations: Value......Page 50
Training the Eye to See Value......Page 51
Chiaroscuro, Sfumato, and Materials......Page 52
Making an Achromatic Gray Scale......Page 54
Creating Tints and Shades......Page 55
Vocabulary Terms......Page 56
Lesson 9—Visual Foundations: Color......Page 58
Color and the Eye......Page 59
Three Aspects of Color......Page 60
Picking Colors......Page 61
Vocabulary Terms......Page 62
Lesson 10—Visual Foundations: Texture......Page 64
The Body’s Perception of Texture......Page 65
Implied Texture......Page 66
Lesson 11—Visual Foundations: Space......Page 70
The Picture Plane......Page 71
Tools for Artists and Designers......Page 72
Linear Perspective......Page 73
Oblique Projection and Isometric Projection......Page 74
Lesson 12—Thinking in Three Dimensions......Page 76
High Relief Art......Page 77
Clothing Design......Page 78
Lesson 13—Building in Three Dimensions......Page 80
Volume, Mass, and Strength......Page 81
Scale and Proportion......Page 82
Case Study: A Tiny House......Page 83
Lesson 14—The Limits of Space: Visual Landscapes......Page 86
Linear Perspective......Page 87
Oblique or Axonometric Projection......Page 88
Landscapes of Nature......Page 89
Unique Experiences......Page 90
Lesson 15—Principles of Design......Page 92
Composing......Page 93
Unity and Variety......Page 94
Balance......Page 95
Proportion and Scale......Page 96
Lesson 16—Exploring Visual Time......Page 98
Time in Art......Page 99
Using Time to Communicate......Page 100
Time in a Sequence......Page 101
Lesson 17—Strategies for Visual Storytelling......Page 104
Components of a Visual Narrative......Page 105
Static Visual Narrative Skills: One Frame......Page 107
Static Visual Narrative Skills: Multiple Frames......Page 108
Lesson 18—Symbol, Subject, Content, and Context......Page 110
Symbols......Page 111
Context......Page 112
Exploring Context......Page 114
Lesson 19—Making Choices: Material, Method, and Style......Page 116
Tensile Strength and Durability......Page 117
Cost and Availability......Page 119
Style......Page 120
Lesson 20—Cultivating Creative Habits......Page 122
The Creative Habit......Page 123
Setting the Stage......Page 124
Creating Habits......Page 125
Nurturing Habits......Page 126
Lesson 21—The Visual Life: Active Observation......Page 128
Distance from the Subject......Page 129
Becoming an Active Observer......Page 130
Types of Thinking......Page 131
The Next Steps......Page 132
Lesson 22—The Visual Life: Exploring and Connecting......Page 134
Seeing Connections......Page 135
Intellectual Journeys......Page 137
A Model Process......Page 138
Lesson 23—The Visual Life: Collecting......Page 140
Beginning to Collect......Page 141
Curating a Collection......Page 142
Collections as Inspiration......Page 143
Collecting Art......Page 144
Lesson 24—The Visual Life: Becoming a Maker......Page 146
Identifying Your Reason......Page 147
Tips for Getting Starting......Page 148
After You Get Started......Page 149
After Your First Attempt(s)......Page 150
Bibliography......Page 152
Lesson 1—Visual Power: What It Is and Why It Matters......Page 8
Image Credits......Page 158

Citation preview

Topic Better Living

Subtopic Hobby & Leisure

Visual Literacy Skills How to See Course Guidebook Professor Carrie Patterson St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Published by

THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters

4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia, 20151‑2299 Phone 1.800.832.2412 Fax 703.378.3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2019

Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company.

Carrie Patterson, MFA Professor of Art St. Mary’s College of Maryland

C

arrie Patterson is a Professor of Art at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She earned her BFA in Studio Art from James Madison University and her MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, she attended the New York Studio School, where she received training in observational drawing and painting from secondgeneration Abstract Expressionists. Professor Patterson has been with St. Mary’s College of Maryland since 2004, teaching both undergraduate and graduate art courses and working across departments to foster an interdisciplinary approach to art education. Professor Patterson is also a visual artist whose work considers how color, form, and line can measure and express our physical experiences. Her artwork has been exhibited across the country with solo shows in New York City, Philadelphia, Virginia, and Minnesota. Internationally, she has exhibited at Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá, Colombia. She has received several grants and fellowships for her work, including the Savelli Painting Award and the graduate teaching award from the University of Pennsylvania, a Virginia Governor’s Fellowship award, a Seedling Painting Award from the Leeway Foundation, an exhibition grant from the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation, and a Civic Engagement Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Through her studio in Leonardtown, Maryland, Professor Patterson promotes lifelong learning with a wide range of art classes for students of all ages and experience levels. She is currently developing an art curriculum for early childhood and K–12 students to encourage the establishment of critical visual literacy skills as part of foundational learning.■

Table of Contents Introduction Professor Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i Course Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Lesson Guides Lesson 1

Visual Power: What It Is and Why It Matters . . . . 2

Lesson 2

Seeing as a Skill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Lesson 3

Sensing and Perceiving: How You See . . . . . . . 14

Lesson 4

Should You Believe What You See? . . . . . . . . . 20

Lesson 5

Representation and Illusion . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Lesson 6

Elements of Visual Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Lesson 7

Visual Foundations: Dot, Line, and Shape . . . . . 38

Lesson 8

Visual Foundations: Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Lesson 9

Visual Foundations: Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Lesson 10 Visual Foundations: Texture . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Lesson 11 Visual Foundations: Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Lesson 12 Thinking in Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Lesson 13 Building in Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Lesson 14 The Limits of Space: Visual Landscapes . . . . . . 80 Lesson 15 Principles of Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Lesson 16 Exploring Visual Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Lesson 17 Strategies for Visual Storytelling . . . . . . . . . . 98 Lesson 18 Symbol, Subject, Content, and Context . . . . .

104

Lesson 19 Making Choices: Material, Method, and Style .

110

Lesson 20 Cultivating Creative Habits . . . . . . . . . . . .

116

Lesson 21 The Visual Life: Active Observation . . . . . . .

122

Lesson 22 The Visual Life: Exploring and Connecting . . .

128

Lesson 23 The Visual Life: Collecting . . . . . . . . . . . .

134

Lesson 24 The Visual Life: Becoming a Maker . . . . . . .

140

Supplementary Materials Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Image Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

VISUAL LITERACY SKILLS: How to See

Course Scope

T

his course is an introduction to how visual communication works. For people with healthy eyes, the sensory stimuli that their brains process in a typical day are 90 percent visual. Nearly every waking moment, we are making decisions, forming judgments, and feeling emotions based on what we see. How does that work, and how can we take advantage of that process to become more powerful consumers and creators of visual information? The course starts with an investigation of the process of seeing, both physically and cognitively. The course explores how our eyes and brains encounter and assess visual reality, and the many ways in which that process can deceive us. The course also examines the relationship between reality and representation, and how those concepts overlap and diverge in complicated ways. Exercises provide practice in slow observation, consciously separating our visual experience from our tendency to draw conclusions from it. The course then moves into the rules and elements that govern how we make meaning from what we see. By looking carefully at foundational elements like line, shape, value, color, texture, and space, we begin to understand the language of visual communication and how it functions both in everyday experiences and in the context of art and design. The second half of the course shifts its focus to the ways in which artists and designers employ elements of visual syntax to create visual objects and experiences. This part of the course explores the many ways that space can be constructed, whether in two dimensions or in three. We encounter the principles of design that artists and designers use, manipulate, or reject in creating their works. The course also looks at strategies for communicating time and motion visually and crafting compelling visual narratives. The course confronts the complex challenges of understanding art and design objects as consumers, assessing subject matter and context, and carefully considering functional and material choices. ■

LESSON 1 Visual Power:

What It Is and Why It Matters From crossing a street to analyzing data, you depend on your ability to understand what you see to navigate the world. However, understanding what you see can sometimes be complicated. The more informed you are about the ways that your brain makes meaning from what you see—the more visually literate you are—the more skillful and effective you will be in interacting with your surroundings. But visual literacy is about more than just how you receive and understand your visual experiences. It’s also about understanding your physical presence and the way you create and arrange your life.

Visual Choices You make visual choices every day that frame the context for how you experience life and how others experience you. For instance, your clothes, home, car, and choice of media all represent visual choices. Additionally, you spend nearly every waking minute receiving visual information from and about others. Every time you walk into a restaurant, turn on the television, drive down a highway, or complete virtually any other task, visual messaging is on the way.

Lesson 1 

Visual Power: What It Is and Why It Matters

3

At a certain level, visual choices are made so that people can feel at home in the world. Take, for instance, welcoming park benches or bright street lights. These promote a certain sense of community. Of course, visual manipulation can be used for less comforting ends as well. For instance, digital editing can make almost any situation appear to be real. This may be entertaining when it comes to blockbuster films that thrive on CGI, but it represents a real threat when it’s unclear whether a politician’s speech, a piece of combat footage, or video evidence of a crime has been digitally altered.

4

Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Slow Observation Slow observation is the fundamental skill on which all other visual literacy skills are built. Carving out some moments to practice slow observation and description will be essential for getting the most from this course. Luckily, slow observation can be done almost anywhere at any time. For instance, if you’re stuck in traffic, you can practice observing. Look at the taillights in front of you, the bumper stickers, and the road signs. Note the multitude of colors and shapes, each of them chosen for a reason. If you can’t get to sleep, try observing the layers of shadows in your dark bedroom. See where your eyes go when your brain doesn’t direct them. If you’re waiting for the microwave to finish, observe the design of the microwave—the material choices that went into every aspect of the machine. Being able to observe and describe these things is the first step in knowing how and what they communicate. You can describe what you see in words, but describing what you see by drawing can be a powerful tool as well. Many visual artists and designers keep a sketchbook handy for just this reason, and a pen and paper can be useful tools as you move through this course.

Suggested Reading Dondis, A Primer of Visual Literacy, pp. 1–20. Flam, Matisse on Art.

Lesson 1 

Visual Power: What It Is and Why It Matters

5

Exercise 1: In the Bag The following exercise is an introduction to descriptive drawing and visualization. It involves a paper bag with an object inside. If you try this exercise, make sure someone else puts an object in the bag for you so that you don’t know what it is. Close your eyes, and then put your hands inside the bag. Experience the object without trying to attach meaning or identification to the object. Then, to the best of your ability, draw what your sense of touch experienced. Allow yourself at least 10 minutes to draw what is in the bag. When completing this exercise, some people can understand the basic shape of the object—both the actual mass and the empty space around it. In some cases, people can translate the direction or the height-towidth traits of the object. And some can show more than one side of an object and its texture. If you try this exercise at home, try it with a friend. See if you can both secretly pick an object for the other person. After you draw your objects, talk about what skills you already have and what skills you can identify for improvement. Don’t be surprised if you need practice. People are so trained to identify what they see with words that it takes practice putting those words on hold. This builds time to observe and feel using all of the senses.

By practicing slow observation, you can build up your visual muscle memory.

A second layer to the exercise is this: Once you understand the basic shape of the object, draw the object again. This time, look away from your paper and look only at the object. This type of drawing is called a blind contour. It is a way to train your eye to move at the same pace as your hand, but you do so by not looking at your page.

6

Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Exercise 2: Multisensory Engagement Seeing is a multisensory event. Because of this, developing visual literacy skills requires multisensory engagement. These are skills, and like other skills, they require repetition and practice. This exercise will give you some of that practice. To complete the exercise, spend an hour in a state of awareness about what you see. Practice using words about what you see. If you’re alone, you can do this out loud, or if you don’t want to disturb others, you can just say the words in your head. For a time, practice seeing and naming shapes. If you look at your television, you might say “rectangle.” If you look at your cereal bowl, name the shape that you see. If your first instinct is to say “circle,” look again. Are you sure you aren’t really seeing an oval from the angle that you’re looking? Try to separate your visual experience from your brain’s tendency to make conclusions about objects. Trust your eyes. Then, do the same thing with colors. Name the colors that you see as you come across them. Again, try not to let your brain take the steering wheel here. Your brain may be screaming at you that the plant is green, but perhaps your eyes are telling you that it’s yellow with sunlight behind it. Finally, look at and name textures. Examples include materials like leather, metal, wood, and velvet, and traits like soft, slick, sharp, and hard. Don’t touch the textures for now. Instead, just notice how you recognize them by sight. You may find this exercise to be more complicated than it sounds. From infancy, your brain has been furiously working to turn your visual experiences into matrices of information, memory, and meaning. It knows that your survival depends on being able to rapidly turn visual sensation into cognition, and so it uses sophisticated shortcuts to allow you to do this as quickly and with as little conscious effort as possible. The exercise runs counter to your brain’s efforts. You won’t be taking those shortcuts. Think of it as practicing visual mindfulness.

Lesson 1 

Visual Power: What It Is and Why It Matters

7

LESSON 2

Seeing as a Skill Visual literacy is the ability to accurately receive visual messages, to use those messages to construct meaning, and then to create and convey visual messages. The more proficient you are in visual literacy, the more visual power you have. The effort to become a master of visual literacy is worthwhile on many levels: It increases your personal enrichment, your powers of communication, and your resistance to manipulation by others.

Three Processes The best way to tackle the endeavor of improving visual literacy is to understand its components. This lesson describes visual literacy as three different processes. The first is the process of understanding how people see. That’s the ability for brains to translate what people see into form and meaning, providing a tangible measuring stick for assessment. This includes sensation and perceptions like depth and balance that create our common experience of the visual world. The second is the process of understanding visual syntax. Syntax in language is a set of absolute rules applied to the construction of sentences. Visual syntax has rules based on perception, but they are not absolute. The act of designing or making an object depends on the maker’s ability to organize visual syntax. That ability is learned. Third is the process of understanding function: Why is the object being created, what is the function, and what is the context?

Process 1: How People See Our bodies inform the process of seeing in more ways than just the visual sense. For example, take balance. At a very basic level, we approach our environment and the spaces we inhabit through our relationship with our body, the ground, and gravity. We also navigate through our bodies. The earliest known units of measurement trace back to using a standard unit from the body like a forearm, foot, or finger. Our bodies and their relationship to our environment define how we view space. Our translation of space defines our worldview. For instance, take a Georgian country manor: A servant and a member of the aristocracy would have visually different views of this space.

Lesson 2 

Seeing as a Skill

9

Process 2: Visual Syntax If we take what we see and try to design or make an object that reflects our experience, we organize it by using visual syntax. Visual syntax is the structure behind the object we are looking at. For instance, if a designer chooses to design a city on a grid over a circular plan, the designer has to consider how the other visual elements like line, shape, color, texture, and scale might play into the overall design. In spoken language, syntax usually serves the basic rules of logic. In visual language, syntax usually serves the basic rules of perception. One example of such a rule is the syntactical principle of figure-ground. For instance, it may take a second for your brain to identify a newly placed dot on a piece of paper as either a hole or a form. This is related to the figure-ground relationship. The brain has to decide if the figure or the ground is the stronger component, creating visual stress.

Process 3: Function and Context It is almost impossible to understand the form of an object without understanding its function. In most cases, the function of an object will determine the form. Function is deeply related to context. Context is the environment in which a visual piece was intended to be experienced. For instance, the function of an altarpiece of a European cathedral was to inform the faithful of the tenets of their faith through visual storytelling. Its context, therefore, was the cathedral where that function would best be served, high up in a place of authority and honor.

10

Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Lesson 2 

Seeing as a Skill

11

Representation, Abstraction, and Symbolism Artists and designers employ these components in different ways and toward different ends. Part of developing your visual power is understanding the modes in which visual components are used. The mode that most people attach to art is representation: what we identify as what we see and know from our lives. Another mode is abstraction: the ability to perceive and convey the kinesthetic quality of an experience. A third mode is symbolism: encoding specific meaning into a visual message. Drawing can help illuminate these three modes. Most of the time, people want to mimic the world and the things in their world. They want to operate in the mode of representation. For example, a drawing that is an accurate rendering of a plant would serve this function. The mode of abstraction is a bit different. Keeping with the example of a drawing of a plant, if an artist wants to emphasize or understand motion and direction rather than color and texture, the artist might leave out some representational details to emphasize the other elements. The artist might also switch up the perspective so that viewers can see all sides of the plant at once. If the artist were to convey the plant through the mode of symbolism, the artist would simplify the plant so much that it might become non-identifiable as a specific plant and instead represent the general idea of a plant. The image can then be used to signify something related, such as life, growth, nature, or freshness.

12

Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

For other examples, think of the symbol used on highway exit signs to designate that there are hotels nearby. This is an extremely simplified image of a person—a circular head—in a bed. All specifics about the person and the bed have been stripped away, and the resulting image has been imbued with the meaning of “hotel ahead.”

Exercises 1. With a partner, see if you can describe a hidden object in a way that prompts recognition. Make note of the words you use to describe the object. You probably reference size, shape, and color, but what else do you include? Do you rely on non-visual clues like weight or tactile sensations? Do you use comparisons? Do you refer to function? All of these are components in visual analysis. 2. Create a map of a space using your body or part of it—for instance, your feet—as your measuring unit. Often, our spaces are created with human bodies in mind, and this exercise can help you see how this element of scale functions.

Suggested Reading Harmon, You Are Here. Saks, The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

Lesson 2 

Seeing as a Skill

13

LESSON 3 Sensing and Perceiving:

How You See

This lesson focuses on how visual perception works. The mechanics of vision play a large part in our perception and experience of the world. To understand it, we need to start with the physiology of seeing.

The Physiology of Seeing The ability to see involves a two-step process. We experience sensations in our eyes that are translated to perceptions in our brain. The sensation part occurs in our eyes. The only thing we ever see, from a sensation standpoint, is light. Our eyes are exquisitely built to gather it and respond to it. The cornea, iris, lens, and retina make up the anatomy of our eyes. The retina contains light-sensitive tissue. Light passes through the cornea and is bent through the pupil in the iris and onto the lens. As it passes through the lens, it is bent a second time and arrives at the retina, where an image is formed. This double bending means that the image that hits the retina is upside down. The upside-down sensation of what we see is reversed again in the brain. Information that the eye receives and sends to the brain includes shape. Tone and color are also gathered through the cones and rods located in the retina. Eyes also receive information about distance, and they are in a nearly constant state of focusing. The lens in the eye is responsible for taking the refracted light that passes through the cornea and adjusting its refraction so that the image is in focus when it hits the retina.

Lesson 3 

Sensing and Perceiving: How You See

15

Vision in the Brain The upside-down but focused image that lands on the retina is converted to electrical signals and sent by the optic nerve to the primary visual cortex in the brain, located in the occipital lobe. The brain does not re-flip the image; rather, it registers the upside-down image as having the correct side up. The next task is to begin organizing the images into some kind of coherent experience. The brain has an active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information. First, it simplifies that information into basic shapes. Then, it identifies the shapes and assigns meaning to them. Three different parts of the brain contribute to this process. The ventral stream recognizes what something is and allows us to name it. The dorsal stream locates the objects in physical space, and the limbic system assigns some sort of emotional response to it.

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Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Gestalt Principles Gestalt psychology, a school of thought that can be traced back to German psychologists in the 1920s, provides much of what we know about how we derive meaning from vision. Gestalt as a term simply means “shape,” “form,” or “whole.” Gestalt psychology relies on the basic idea that each piece of a whole is unique and exists independently from the other parts. Even though the whole is made up of the smaller parts, the whole is also independent from the parts. The principles of this school of thought eventually began to be applied to visual perception. Researchers in this field established six principles to explain the components of perception and their organization. These principles are known as the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization. The principles are figureground, closure, continuance, common fate, similarity, and proximity. Figure-ground refers to the relationship between an object and the background or, in three-dimensional terms, the mass and the void. The tension between figure and ground is a favorite subject for artists. The second Gestalt principle that operates during perception is closure. The idea of closure is simply that our brains want to close open-ended forms or fill in gaps if there are pieces missing. Visual artists rely on the closure principle frequently. The next principle, continuance, is the idea that we will always follow visual lines, curves, or sequences as we try to make perceptive sense of something. This principle is so strong that our eyes will try to follow a path, river, fence, or horizon line off the edge of a map. The fourth principle, the law of common fate, suggests that the brain visually perceives two or more things moving in the same direction as essentially one unit.

Lesson 3 

Sensing and Perceiving: How You See

17

Think of a group of geese traveling in V-formation across an afternoon sky. The brain doesn’t perceive that image as five, seven, or nine different geese. It perceives that image as a single flock of geese. The principle of similarity is somewhat like common fate, but instead of the brain using motion and direction to establish unity, the brain uses similarities in forms, colors, patterns, or other attributes. For instance, the brain does not see 150 individual red apples sitting in the grocery store. It sees a pile of apples, all of which are red and roughly the same shape. The final Gestalt principle of perception is proximity. Proximity is simply the idea that things that are close to one another are part of one group. This has nothing to do with direction, form, color, or anything else. The law of proximity can be a useful organizational principle in the brain’s visual perception; however, it can also steer us wrong in amusing ways. For instance, imagine someone taking a picture of a friend at the beach, only to later discover that the picture seems to depict a palm tree growing out of the friend’s head. In real life, when the photographer took the picture in three-dimensional space, the photographer’s brain could use its depth perception to understand the tree and the friend as separate in space. However, when that image is flattened into two dimensions, the photographer’s brain sees the tree and the friend as occupying the same space, grouped together, and as a single unit: a head sprouting a tree.

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Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Exercises 1. Look at a variety of textile patterns to determine how the principle of figure-ground works. Is there a clear figure and a clear ground, or is there a tension between the two that keeps your eye engaged? 2. See if you can identify Gestalt principles at work in your favorite piece of art or design. Does it have a sense of unity built on common fate, similarity, or proximity? Does it employ continuance to move your eye through the piece?

Suggested Reading Dondis, A Primer of Visual Literacy, pp. 21–67. Rilke, Letters on Cezanne.

Lesson 3 

Sensing and Perceiving: How You See

19

LESSON 4

Should You Believe What You See? As much as we rely on our vision to get us through our days, our eyes can deceive. Knowing this usually works to our benefit, as does keeping in mind that we prioritize and prefer visual information over any other type of knowledge. There is a constant tension between understanding that what we see is crucial to knowledge and understanding that our first conclusions about what we see are not always reliable. Being aware of that tension is a critical part of visual literacy, and learning how to navigate it is part of building visual power.

Cognitive Functions Cognitive functions determine how we infer and derive meaning from observations. And understanding how cognition develops and operates can increase your visual power. Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development are an excellent place to begin learning about how we infer and derive meaning from observation. Piaget was a Swiss psychologist responsible for developing an enormous amount of research that resulted in a theory of child development in four stages. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage, lasting from birth until roughly two years old. The primary characteristic of this stage is that children experience the world through their senses and motor movements, and they do not have object permanence. In the second stage, the preoperational stage, they may understand object permanence, but they don’t have the ability to apply logic. The third stage is the operational concrete stage, during which children will begin to understand concrete ideas that are not directly in front of them. The fourth stage is the formal operational stage, and it happens around the ages of 11 and up. Children are able to conceptualize a world broader than themselves and apply ideas to different circumstances.

Lesson 4 

Should You Believe What You See?

21

The Lemonade Test For the purposes of this lesson, the time from the preoperational stage to the operational stage is the most important. The famous lemonade test is a great example. The lemonade test works this way: It begins with two glasses of the same size and shape. Then, someone pours the same amount of lemonade in both glasses. A child in the preoperational stage will point out that there is the same amount of liquid. Next, a third glass is added, which is taller and thinner. The same amount of liquid is poured into this glass. A child in the preoperational stage will think that there is more liquid in the third glass rather than the same amount. A child in the operational stage will understand that the volume remains unchanged despite the difference in appearances. As the child becomes older, this conclusion will apply to this specific set of glasses and also to an abstract general idea of glasses everywhere.

Optical Illusions Testing our cognitive abilities seems somewhat straightforward, but optical illusions present a different challenge. For instance, the moon appears larger thanks to an optical phenomenon that happens when the moon appears close to the horizon line. Optical illusions sparked an entire movement in art called optical art. This movement began in the 1960s and was heavily influenced by the psychology of perception. Artists like Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely were two artists who used geometric shapes to make the viewer feel like a flat image was moving.

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Context and Comic Books Comic books are an interesting place to look at how cultural norms influence visual choices. For instance, the comics of the 1950s reflected the postwar period and economic boom, showing superheroes who had a lot of time to fish, ice skate, and make friends. There are many amazing examples of optical illusion in two-dimensional art, but we can see it in three dimensions as well. For instance, take the Parthenon in Greece. This is a building that looks like a rectangle, but there are actually no straight lines or right angles in the entire structure.

Frank Lloyd Wright The architect Frank Lloyd Wright was exceptional at maximizing visual illusion while creating a built object that reflects the goals of a generation. One example is the Pope-Leighey house, a Usonian home that sits about an hour outside of Washington DC in Virginia. The size of the home is about 1,200 square feet, so it is not particularly large. However, the Pope-Leighey house doesn’t feel small when you are in it. That’s because Frank Lloyd Wright used all of his skills in visual manipulation to provide an experience that connects the building to the land surrounding it. He provides many opportunities for the shell of the building to expand and compress. For example, the windows are located at the corners of the home, making the corners appear to disappear and let the outside in. Corridors that become smaller as they approach bedrooms make the bedrooms feel larger once you enter them.

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A Usonian house was Wright’s progressive concept, meant to embody an affordable American lifestyle. Connecting the house to the land and to nature was important, but having tons of objects was not valued. Additionally, bedrooms were meant for sleeping. Wright purposefully did not put extra storage space and extra square footage in the bedroom. Just enough space was given for a bed, a bookshelf, and a very small closet.

Interior Design Another example of using cognitive functions combined with conceptual thinking is an interior designer’s use of a specific hue. For instance, if the designer paints one wall of a space blue while all the other walls remain a warmer color, the accent wall will appear to go back in space, extending the visual sensation that the room is larger than it actually is. This is because when we experience atmospheric perspective in real life—for instance, by looking at a mountain range—we may experience the range seeming bluer and grayer the more distant it is from us. If the designer had chosen a vibrant shade of red, the room would automatically appear smaller because the space would seem to compress. If that same designer decided to paint a newborn baby’s room blue in the United States, we may assume that the expecting mother is having a boy. For many reasons, we associate the color blue with a specific gender. However, if that same room were painted blue in the early 1900s, people would have likely assumed the expecting mother was having a girl.

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Exercises 1. Try to create the illusion of movement through straight lines on a page. You can do the radial composition demonstrated in the video lesson, or you can try to invent your own. 2. Practice seeing how design can be used to communicate values by looking at the spaces in your home. Are there spaces that are emphasized by a heightened sense of scale? What is the relationship between the indoor space and the outside world? Why are some spaces closed off or hidden? Does your home communicate something about the past? If so, what?

Suggested Reading Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with Type. McPhee, A Sense of Where You Are. Vision and Art, pp. 12–46.

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LESSON 5

Representation and Illusion Today’s cameras and phones can record, render, and create nearly any believable space or situation. We are so awestruck by the power of technology and the illusions we create that we are often fooled into believing that they are real. This can create real problems, and it can challenge and even limit the power of our visual literacy.

Ways of Seeing In 1972, writer John Berger created a miniseries on BBC called Ways of Seeing. A book accompanied the series, and the series is essential for anyone interested in understanding how photography has shaped our world. One important point that Berger argues is how much our reality has changed because of the power of the photograph and reproduction. He points out that if we would like to view the Mona Lisa, we don’t have to leave our house. We can simply buy a reproduction of it or see a photograph of it online. The photograph has given us the ability to travel far without going anywhere. However, this means we view the Mona Lisa in the context of our own world. Berger argues that if a person got the chance to see the real Mona Lisa after seeing a photograph version, that person’s experience would be changed forever because the person now thinks of the photograph as the real object. Photography has set up a situation where we view the photograph as the truth rather than the actual lived experience.

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Momentary Reality Some images describe a momentar y realit y, not a lasting reality. For instance, imagine a picture of a family around a dining room table. Each family member looks like they are having the time of their life. In the moment, they probably were, but what the photograph is not depicting is just as important as what it does depict. Merely representing or illustrating a scene is not necessarily telling the whole story.

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Photographs as Inventions When we consider whether a photograph captures reality, we need to take into account that a photograph is always in some respect the invention of the photographer. The photograph represents what it portrays, but it also represents a creative moment in the life of the human behind the lens. Louis Finkelstein wrote in 1978 that the term realism in art was fraudulent, deceptive, and untrustworthy. He has a point, and fact and fiction often overlap. For instance, imagine a photograph of a family at a beach. It is a piece of the family’s collective past. However, the children may not remember the heat of the sun, or what their mother was saying, or the laughter. They may not remember that two seconds after the photograph, someone was crying because sand was thrown. As the years pass, the family will begin to replace their memories with the photograph. The photograph will be evidence that this moment took place. The photograph and everything in it becomes remembered truth.

Drawings The same concepts discussed above regarding photographs also apply to drawings. Everything an artist chooses to include in a drawing becomes the artist’s truth. For ins t ance, t ake John James Audubon’s watercolor illustration of a  great blue heron. Audubon is a fascinating example of an artist dedicated to accurate description, producing 435 watercolor paintings for the book  Birds of America.

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At first glance, this painting simply represents a bird. We can clearly identify the bird based on the proportion, scale, texture, coloring, and details. It is depicted in a natural habitat. However, in reality, once Audubon was ready to begin painting, he killed the bird and propped it into a pose inside his studio, doing countless studies for up to 24 hours after their deaths. The background and the bird itself were done at different points in the creative process. Essentially, Audubon was constructing reality, not reflecting reality. The bird was never really in that background; rather, it was cut and pasted into a position that one would see a bird in. Scholars have also noted that Audubon even added some of his own quirkiness into the watercolor, like projecting anthropomorphic personalities onto the birds, making them somewhat less real. His photographs were descriptive and successful in creating the illusion of a bird, but they were not extremely realistic.

Exercises 1. Think back to a memory of which you also have a photograph. Try to put the photograph out of your mind and draw the event as you remember it. Next, compare the drawing to the photograph. Which do you consider more real? 2. Find a local photography exhibit or an online collection of professional photography. Consider the relationship of the photographs to reality. Is the photographer merely trying to capture a real moment in time, or is there more being communicated? What roles do the photographer’s eye, sense of timing, and compositional choices play in your experience of the work?

Suggested Reading Berger, Ways of Seeing. Sontag, On Photography.

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LESSON 6

Elements of Visual Syntax This lesson introduces the concept of visual syntax. Visual syntax is the foundation for visual language, and it includes the formal elements and design principles of art.

The Formal Elements of Art There are seven elements that all artists and designers use to create art objects. These elements are line, shape, form, value, color, texture, and space. Line in art is a path of a moving point. Shape in art is an enclosed area that has a height and a width. Form is the perceived volume of a shape. Value is the degree of lightness or the darkness of a form. Color is the effect produced when light strikes an object and is reflected back to the eye. Texture is the surface quality of an object. Space refers to the distances between, around, and within things. Not all elements are always used in one work of art, but at least one is always used in every designed object that we encounter.

The Design Principles of Art Every time an artist creates something, the artist makes decisions about what elements to include or to edit out. An artwork that contains only shapes and color looks and feels differently than an artwork that includes texture, for instance. Once the artist knows what elements she wants to include, she has to employ the principles of design to make a composition. In foundational art textbooks, there is some variation to the list of important principles of design, ranging from four to seven principles. This lesson will stick to these four principles: unity, emphasis, balance, and proportion and scale. Unity refers to the common visual element in a work of art. Emphasis is the part of the design that draws the viewer’s eye. Balance refers to the distribution of weight among the elements. Proportion and scale refer to how the parts relate to the whole. A composition is an arrangement of those elements by the artist.

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Visual Syntax: The Damascus Room and the Magic Garden To show visual syntax in action, this lesson turns to a pair of amazing interiors from art history. One is the Damascus Room on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The other is the Magic Garden, which is open to the public in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Damascus Room is ordered, calm, and refined. The Magic Garden is charged, reflective, and alive. The Damascus Room is 22 feet high, 16 feet wide, and 26 feet long. It is made of wood, paint, marble, stucco, and glass. It dates as early as 1707 and served as a residential reception chamber during the Ottoman occupation of Syria. It is highly decorative and inscribed with poetry on the walls. The artisans chose materials that would showcase each texture and reflect light. It has two basic areas, one raised and one lower. Even though it is highly decorative and probably had brighter color than it has today, the dominance of the repetition of the color and shapes unifies the floor. The concentration of red, yellow, black, and white in small quadrants focuses viewers’ attention, while the large areas of white marble give the eye a place to rest. The horizontal and vertical stripes break up the floor evenly and symmetrically. By contrast, designer Isaiah Zagar’s Magic Garden features the mashing together of individual pieces of objects such as mirrors, trash, and bottles. They retain their shapes, creating a space that is alive, reflective, and optically charged.

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Shape and line are separated as two elements that dominate in this interior space. Color is used, but the rhythm and movement through the space is dependent on the direction of the line through the space and the direction of each shape leading to another shape. The Magic Garden would be overwhelming, but Zagar has organized the color palette to be muted, modulated in value, and only bright in specific areas. This artist wants viewers to feel and see the elements of shapes and textures, covering every surface possible.

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Visual Syntax: The Peacock Room and a Studio On the opposite end of the visual spectrum are James McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room and this course’s instructor’s studio. Originally designed for Frederick R. Leyland in 1876 to house his collection of porcelain in his London home, the Peacock Room can be seen in Washington DC at the Freer Gallery of Art. Charles Freer purchased the room in 1904, disassembled it, and moved it to America, showcasing his collection of ceramics from Asia and the Middle East. Like the Magic Garden, this room presents objects that were not originally meant to be exhibited together. Somehow, Whistler’s design was harmonious enough to include many styles from many lands. Whistler overhauled the original room, designed by architect Thomas Jeckyll, by using a deep, dark Prussian blue with highlights of green and gold. The room is organized and the eyes of viewers are controlled by vertical and horizontal lines created by the grid of gilded molding that runs from floor to ceiling. Whistler uses two shades of gold, indicating the pattern and shimmer of the feathers of a peacock. The pattern, primarily made of shape, adds a contrast almost like a weight to balance the strong linear quality of the gilded molding. This allows the viewer to experience the fullness of the room but to focus on the objects displayed in the collection. The Peacock Room is an interior that depends on color, texture, and value as key elements to its timelessness.

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This course’s instructor’s studio works for comparison purposes. It features clean lines and a reliance on black, white, and the natural color of wood. Color is limited to the artwork on the wall and materials on the counter. There is a reliance on natural lighting and an emphasis on hiding items to create space in the occupant’s head to imagine new ideas.

Conclusion You can use certain design features to enhance your well-being in the spaces that you occupy. For instance, color affects our emotional and physical well-being. Material and texture can highlight temperature, making us feel cool or warm. Lighting can be practical, but it can also give us a sense of calm, order, and scale. To learn to use these elements and principles in a room in your home, check to see if a historic home is open for tours near you. The best situation is to make sure the home has been restored as close as possible to the original. When you visit, take a sketchbook or camera with you. Take notes about what you see. What formal elements are used? What principles of design? Pick one room to focus on. Next, visit a contemporary space that you like to be. This could be a restaurant, a retail store, a studio, or another person’s home. Do the same thing. Focus on one room and really look at how it is designed. What formal elements and principles of design are used? Make some sketches.

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The more you practice formal analysis on the designed spaces and objects around you, the more fluent you will become in visual syntax, and the more you will begin to see and function in the world like an artist and designer does.

Exercises 1. Practice slow observation and formal analysis by looking carefully at something you see every day. This could be an object in your home, at your desk at work, or a space that you frequently occupy. Draw what you are seeing, noticing shape, color, relative size, and other visual elements. If the object or space was designed, consider the choices that went into each formal element you identify. 2. Visit a public building (like a library, museum, or school) or a business space, like a store or restaurant. See how elements of visual syntax are used to move people through the space and give a sense of function. Is the building historic? How is this preserved and communicated? Make a sketch if you can, identifying the major visual elements and their impact.

Suggested Reading Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, chapter 4. Itten, The Elements of Color. Leborg, Visual Grammar.

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LESSON 7 Visual Foundations:

Dot, Line, and Shape

This lesson looks closely at some of the visual elements that artists and designers use in their creative process. In particular, it focuses on three element types: dots, lines, and shapes.

Dots A dot is an individual point in space. Once an artist makes a point on a piece of paper, a location is established and a figure is placed on a ground. One singular dot could mean one figure in an empty field. Many dots spread far enough apart stay individual, but establish their meaning based on Pointillism the distance between the other dots. One of the most common associations with a dot Another way to use a dot is the art movement is to repeat it so often that called pointillism, most the tone of an object is often associated with indicated by how close the the paintings of Georges dots are to each other. This Seurat. Seurat and many is similar to tonal printing other artists used the using a halftone. In printing, blunt end of a brush to a halftone is a technique repeat a dot over and that simulates a gradation of over using only red, value using dots and altering yellow, blue, and black. the size of the dots.

Exercise: Dot Practice To get some practice with dots, grab a hole punch, some colored paper, glue, and your sketchbook. Visualize an object in your head, like a tree or an eye. Make the object twice: once with dots that are close and once with the dots far apart. Notice how the distance of the dots affects the image.

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Lines A line is a series of dots going somewhere. Lines are the simplest, fastest way to convey a message or take the mind on an imaginative journey. A few simple lines can become a symbol that conveys meaning. Lines are also relative—that is, they can be shorter, longer, thicker, or thinner than one another. Additionally, they are directional. For instance, vertical lines indicate movement up and down, while horizontal lines indicate movement from left to right. Both of these add stability, while diagonal lines increase visual tension. Lines can indicate lightness or darkness on a form. By overlapping marks in a technique called crosshatching, an artist can make a form light or dark depending on how many lines overlap. Lines aren’t always literal. An important concept in art and design is the implied line—that is, a line created by juxtaposing two shapes, making an artificial boundary  or a sight line that is implied between key forms. In architecture, implied lines often come with the placement of decorative tiles, which use contrasts in color or material to imply lines and move the eye through the space.

Shapes A shape is a two-dimensional form with clear boundaries. Shapes occur when lines become thick and dots become large. Shapes also happen when a line, a change in texture, or a change in color creates a boundary. Shapes become masses when there is volume, creating a three-dimensional form.

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Once you identify the full range of shapes that are available, there is no limit to your ability to create. You can hone your shape-seeing skills at home with a sketchbook and a pencil by doing the following: Take your finger and try to trace the shape of an object. Simply follow the edge and work your way around the object. Next, turn around and try to draw it from memory. Slow your eye and hand down to the same speed. You will likely see more shapes than you remembered. They might be complicated shapes which do not fit neatly into the geometric packages of square, circle, and rectangle. The next step is to draw the object again, this time while looking at it. Go slowly and use a contour line. Put your pencil to the paper and start drawing the edge of the object. Try not to lift your pencil up. Stare at the object more than your paper. When you finish, you may find you have seen even more detail. Another shape-honing activity is to obtain a cup of Play-Doh or air dry clay, find an interesting object in your house, and make a model of it. Walk around the object or put the object on a rotating base so that you can see it all the way around. Try to mold the clay from all sides. To understand the mass, you will have to consider the object’s negative space—that is, its empty space. The uniqueness of a mass or shape informs the artist’s ability to render, sculpt, and see the impact of the emptiness on the form.

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Lines, Shapes, and Dots in Action To get a quick picture of the range of options and choices in commercial art, just check out a display of greeting cards at your local store and see how commercial artists design simple messages. You will see examples of designers expertly combining dots, lines, and shapes to convey messages. You can also try making a handmade card for someone using just dots, lines, and shapes. You can use color, but it is OK to keep it abstract. The more intentional you are with targeting your audience—that is, who is going to receive the card—the better your artwork will be. Interesting textile artists can also provide inspiration for your work. Many artists design patterns with line, shape, and color, and then turn those patterns into textile designs with a variety of methods. For instance, Alyssa Salomon uses screen printing, which creates large rolls of fabric that are then turned into bags, aprons, cloth books, and more. Other artists use digital methods in their process of creating fabric.

Suggested Reading Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, chapters 1 and 2. Bang, Picture This.

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Exercise: Creating Shapes Gather three pieces of white paper and one sheet of black paper. Cut the black paper into three sections. With one section, use a hole punch to make some dots. With another section, make a number of thick and thin strips. With the final section, make some shapes of different sizes. Visualize an object in your head, such as a tree or eye. Make the image on the first piece of white paper using the dots. With the second piece of white paper, make the image using the strips. For the third piece of white paper, make the object once more. The idea is to see what choices you make when making the object with each type of element.

Exercise: Lines in Photographs Take a photograph that consciously uses line as a compositional element. First, identify an actual line and use it as an eye-leading element in your composition. Then, see if you can arrange your photograph’s subject so that an implied line is created.

Exercise: Collage Create a collage using only shapes to make a recognizable object. Do you gravitate toward geometric shapes or organic shapes? How do you employ positive and negative space to define the object?

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LESSON 8 Visual Foundations:

Value

This lesson looks at what value is and how value is used in creating art forms. The lesson goes over specific terminology for value, identifies tools that artists use, and provides some exercises to strengthen your ability to see value.

Value Defined When visual artists talk about value, they are referring to the lightness or darkness of a given hue, or the lightness or darkness of a form as light falls over the form. Value can change depending on the color of the object. Value can also be used to create patterns and the illusion of light and form. When it comes to a painting, the highlights in a dark area are never as light as the highlights in a light area. Similarly, the darks in a light area are never as dark as the darks in a dark area.

Training the Eye to See Value Your eyes have both rods and cones. Rods do not help with color vision. They work at very low levels of light. If you go into a dark room and open your eyes, your eyes will adjust to see light and forms, but you will lose color clarity and see more in terms of a gray scale. With this simple understanding of how your eyes work, here are some tips to see the value of the world around you: Try looking directly in front of you. It is likely that you are sitting in a chromatic room where there are many colors and many shades of gray. If you squint, some of that color information will go away, and you will be able to see the lightness or darkness of each object more clearly. Another method is a traditional studio assignment. In a drawing class, the instructor uses an old slide projector with a slide of a gray scale image. By adjusting the focus on the lens, the instructor starts out with the image blurry. Students draw the image blurry first so that they see the overall lights, darks, and basics of the composition. Every 10 minutes or so, the instructor adjusts the image so that it becomes slightly clearer.

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This technique trains the students to see overall shapes and large value relationships. As the image becomes more focused, they get into the details. Squinting and blurring can go a long way to help you see value, but you can also stare at the edges of forms to better ascertain if they are light or dark. Another practice tip is to find something that is white and something that is black. Next, to figure out value, find an object in your room to compare to the white and black objects. For instance, you might find that a chair is somewhere in the middle range of gray between white and black. Finally, you can use your smartphone. Simply snap a picture of anything and change the picture to gray scale. You can understand the value very quickly.

Chiaroscuro, Sfumato, and Materials Practicing chiaroscuro and sfumato provides another way to hone your sense of value. Chiaroscuro is a technique where you focus on the high contrasts of lights and darks to create the illusion of mass and volume. In sfumato, you use small gradations of value to establish volume. Refer to the video lesson for a demonstration. Keep in mind that the materials you have at your disposal and the way you work with them can influence the way you work with value. For instance, a 2B pencil will only achieve a certain amount of lightness and darkness. A 6B pencil, with softer graphite, can make much darker marks. A 2H drafting pencil can make much lighter marks. Charcoal, graphite, ink, and paint all have strengths and weaknesses innate to the material. Marble, clay, wood, metal, and porcelain are all different in terms of value from each other.

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You might try both chiaroscuro and sfumato by using a paper bag as your subject. Try drawing it in sfumato, focusing on gradual changes in value. You might use a range of pencil hardness, or try layering marks with different intensity. Then, try it again in chiaroscuro, heightening the contrasts with more intense levels of value. You might use pens or charcoal for this, or you might simply work on the outer edges of the pencil hardness scale. Once you’ve tried both techniques, see which one you prefer. Consider the different impact each approach has on the viewer’s experience of the object.

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Chromatic Value Chromatic value is the darkness or lightness of a color. Color can complicate value, and value can complicate color. Additionally, surfaces reflect light differently, and value changes depending on media. Color also has unique properties of light and dark. For instance, yellow will almost always be lighter than blue when it comes straight out of a paint tube. You can locate the value of a color on a gray scale. An achromatic gray scale is a tool that you can create to help with this. It contains black, white, and 10 steps of modulated gray in between.

Making an Achromatic Gray Scale To make an achromatic gray scale, start with a sheet of white paper. You will also need black paper and gray paper in varying degrees of darkness. Cut a two-inch strip of black paper and glue it to an edge of your starter white paper. Then, turn your attention to the gray papers. Cut out two-by-one-inch columns of each gray, and line them up in a row from lightest to darkest. Once your grays are in order, punch a hole on either side of each column. Line them up on top of the black column you have already glued. This should allow the black to come through the punched hole on one side and the white to come through the punched hole on the other side. Then, find your middle gray color. Cut a thinner strip of the middle gray and place it on top of the scale. You should be able to see which grays are high-key and which grays are low-key by comparing the middle gray. Glue your gray scale together and cut it out so you can use it.

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If you place this tool next to any object, it will help you see the value. There is value in making the scale yourself, but if you want to skip that step, you can also buy a similar tool at any art store.

Creating Tints and Shades You can also use black and white to modify value through tinting and shading. When you add white to a color, you are creating tints of that hue—that is, lightening its value to different degrees. If you add black to a color, you are creating shades of that hue— that is, darkening its value to different degrees. To practice making tints and shades, obtain some paint in a specific color, a brush, and some paper. Use a paper plate, plastic plate, or plastic cutting board for a palette. Make a strip of the paint straight from the tube. Then, take the same hue and add white in varying degrees to make a scale of tints. Wash your brush out and do the same thing with the same hue. This time, however, add black to make a scale of shades.

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The Uses of Value Considering value and material can be immediately practical in your everyday life. For example, the next time you choose a curtain, consider its value in context. Ask yourself questions such as: How will the value of the curtain register against the value of the wall? Should it have some transparency, changing the value as light moves and adding a visual dynamic to the space? Alternatively, should it be an opaque curtain that maintains its value and provides a stable element? That will inform your choice of material.

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Chiaroscuro:

A technique in which the artist blends light and shadow to create volume, mass, and space. The result is a dramatic sense of light.

High-key value:

A value that has a level of middle gray or lighter.

Low-key value:

A value that has a level of middle gray or darker.

Sfumato:

A technique in which the artist modulates the steps between dark and light in subtle transitions to create a soft, hazy impression.

Value:

The relative degree of lightness or darkness, or the quantity of light reflected by a color. Value can be created to make volume and light in two dimensions, or it can be created as a decorative pattern across the surface of a picture plane.

Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Exercises 1. Clear a table. Place an egg on a white piece of paper on the table. Try to render the image with either pen or pencil, matching the grays that you see as you go. This drawing should take about 15 minutes. Do not worry about proportions—only value. Next, take a black piece of paper and put the egg on it. Try to render the egg again, this time starting with the black shape around the egg. When done, compare the two drawings and the value scale you created. You could also do this exercise with a camera in gray scale if you prefer, comparing the two pictures. This exercise shows that value and perceptions of it are relative. 2. Practice determining and representing value by sketching the same object in both sfumato and chiaroscuro. If you feel uncomfortable sketching, you can take a digital photograph and edit it to create sfumato or chiaroscuro effects. Look carefully at your two products. How do the different treatments of value change your experience of the same object? 3. Create an achromatic value scale.

Suggested Reading Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, chapter 6. Vision and Art, pp. 100–138.

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LESSON 9 Visual Foundations:

Color

This lesson discusses the potential of color as an instrument in visual language. It also looks at how you can use your ability to see color to improve any visual decision you make and heighten your visual awareness of the world.

Color and the Eye There are two types of photoreceptors in the eye: rods and cones. Rods help us see when the light is at very low levels, like at night. This is called scotopic vision. Meanwhile, three types of cones help us see the full range of color at higher levels of light. This is called photopic vision. The ability to see a full range of color depends on the cones functioning to full capacity and responding to light wavelengths. Visible light is only a relatively narrow section of the electromagnetic spectrum, the scope of all known types of light waves. These light waves hit objects, and depending on the material, the object either absorbs or reflects the light waves. White light includes all colors in the visible spectrum. If white light hits a red apple, the apple will absorb all of the color waves except for the red light wave. It will reflect the red light wave, which will in turn reach a person’s eye when the person looks at the apple. When that red light wave hits the cones in the retina, the person will see the apple as red. Keep in mind that it is only the narrow range of visible light that the cones are able to sense. People don’t see anything of the infrared or ultraviolet parts of the spectrum, though many insects do. The fact that our experience of color is a result of light reflected off of objects means that material artists and light designers have to deal with color differently. Because white light includes all colors in the spectrum, as light designers add colors to a light, it will approach white. This is called additive light mixing. The process is different when a painter, for instance, mixes paints together. As she adds colors to the mix, the number of colors that are absorbed by the material increases, and the number of colors that are reflected decreases. Therefore, if she is adding the colors in equal ratio, she will eventually produce black. Even though the process is additive, the result is subtractive because the viewer sees fewer reflected colors.

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Three Aspects of Color Color works in three dimensions: hue, value, and chroma. Hue is the color name. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. Chroma is the intensity or saturation of a color, or the brightness or dullness of a given hue. To get familiar with these three dimensions, take a look around your room or find a picture. Identify three hues; for example, you might see brown, yellow, and blue. Next, take one of those hues and see if you can identify at least one lighter tint of that hue and one darker shade of the same hue. These are different values. Finally, if you can identify the same hue as being brighter or duller, you will have familiarized yourself with chroma.

The Munsell Color System The Munsell color system provides a number/letter equivalency for hue, value, and chroma. It is used in geographic studies, archaeology, interior design, and the making of art. The Munsell color chart shows color threedimensionally.

RP

P

10R

5R

10R

5

5Y

R

10Y

10PB

5Y

5P

YR

10

P

10

5PB

5GY

GY

10

B

10 5G

10G

5BG

G

10B

5B

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Relativity Our memories for color accuracy are usually inaccurate because color is relative. Color is affected by everything else around it. For example, colorful flowers will pop more dramatically in a gray room than in a red room. When choosing the right color to dye someone’s hair, a hairdresser has to understand how the synthetic color is going to look relative to the client’s eye color and skin color. Additionally, value is relative to what other values are around it. This comes in handy for painters: If you can make the value of a color change, you will be able to weave your painting together with color. If you are a textile artist, this is practical because you may be limited in yarn or fabric options and need to make the most out of three color choices. Chroma is also relative. Keep in mind that dull colors make excellent glue colors in a painting or a room. Neutral colors will give your other colors room to breathe. Knowledge of color properties has many practical applications. For instance, if a paint color for a wall or piece of furniture is too green, adding red will cut out the green.

Picking Colors One easy way to handle a color palette is to keep your basic color chord monochromatic—that is, use one hue plus tints and shades of the hue. Alternatively, you can expand your palette but keep all the colors in the same family by going across the color wheel to the opposite color. This creates a complementary color chord.

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Imagine blue is the primary color in your kitchen. To deepen your range of blues, look for blues that are slightly neutral or grayed by using the complement: orange. That way, you can weave some neutral grays through your space and a pop of orange in some throw pillows or flowers. This is the key to making a color chord stay coherent and in the same family. If you want a room with more than one color, organize your palette based on a tri-chord—that is, three colors that are equidistant from each other on the color wheel. A tri-chord can give you an enormous range of color.

Vocabulary Terms Achromatic color: A color that the viewer sees only in terms of neutral grays, black, and white. Additive color:

Color created by superimposing light rays. Mixing the light of red, blue, and green together produces white light.

Chroma:

The intensity of a hue.

Color chord:

The colors chosen to use for a design problem.

Hue:

The name of a color.

Subtractive color: Color created by wavelengths reflected back to the viewer. For instance, mixing red, blue, and green together absorbs light, producing a mixture of dark color.

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Tint:

A hue with white added.

Shade:

A hue with black added.

Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Exercises 1. Get color-aid paper or a range of color swatches from the paint store or hardware store. Cut a strip from each color. Next, pick out three colors from the smaller strips that are different in hue, value, and chroma. Stare at them. Memorize them. Turn them over. Try to find the matching swatch in the large color swatches just by remembering the three elements of color. 2. Visit your closet and play mix-and-match with your wardrobe. How do the colors change relative to each other as you combine them in various ways? Hold pieces up to your skin and note how they appear relative to your skin tone. 3. Play one of the many color games online. Organize the color based on hue, value, and chroma. How did you do?

Suggested Reading Albers, Interaction of Color. Batchelor, Chromophobia. Finlay, Color. St. Claire, The Secret Lives of Color.

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LESSON 10 Visual Foundations:

Texture

Texture shapes art, and art shapes texture. It deserves an in-depth look, which this lesson provides. The lesson begins with a description of how our bodies perceive texture, and then it moves on to ways to apply and analyze the use of texture.

The Body’s Perception of Texture Artists and designers are very aware of the power of texture to create physical and emotional responses, so they often gather information around them from everyday life and use that information in artwork to simulate the experience of touch or texture. For instance, synthetic stone is often cheaper than real stone, but it can still be used to trigger perceptions associated with nature. Artists and designers are able to use texture by directly tapping into how our bodies interpret texture. The somatosensory system, or our sense of touch, is controlled by nerve receptors on the skin that combine with cells to produce different stimuli. There are three main types of receptors that have agency in our sense of touch. Thermoreceptors control our sense of temperature. Nociceptors control our sense of pain. Mechanoreceptors allow us to sense the change in surfaces or degrees of pressure felt on the skin. Once the receptors The artist Anne Ryan experience touch, they send created more than 400 some signals to the brain collages that use texture via the nervous system, as a unifying force. and the brain organizes the experience so the person can respond.

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The Power of Texture Texture is an incredibly versatile element for designers and artists. It is also an unavoidable one: Texture is inherent in each material that an artist uses. If you are using material to create something, you are engaging in some way with actual texture. Texture can be combined with patterns and marks to create fascinating and powerful art. One example is the assemblage titled A Parrot for Juan Gris by Joseph Cornell, made in 1953. In A Parrot for Juan Gris, Cornell gathered a set of disparate objects in a box. Texture comes from a variety of sources, including the newspaper text and the variety of fonts, the cork and the wood of the box, the flatness of the black paper, the string, the metal circle, and the faux wood piece behind the bird. In this one image, actual texture functions in three different ways: as text, pattern, and mark. In this context, a pattern is a series of repeated elements or designs, and a mark is a visible trace or impression of a line. Patterns may or may not occur in an art object, but marks always do.

Implied Texture Implied texture occurs when an artist or designer copies the surface characteristic of an object so well that it gives the illusion of texture. It is a key feature of representational art. When implied texture is done well, it can be astonishing and illusionistic. All art students are required to learn implied texture, and they often do it by trying to copy the surface texture of something exactly. For instance, a student might have to re-create a stone out of paper and paint the surface to look like a replica.

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When implied texture is done with great skill and detail, it achieves a feat termed trompe l’oeil, which translates as “trick of the eye.” It becomes a visual illusion. There are many examples of trompe l’oeil throughout art history. William Michael Harnett was particularly famous for his expertise in implied texture. For instance, in his work titled My Gems from 1888, the viewer can’t see any brushstrokes made by the artist. The viewer can only see the illusion of multiples surfaces.

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Implied texture can also be found in merchandise. Camouflage clothing is a great place to look to understand how artists and designers create abstract textures that heavily rely on pattern. For instance, if an artist pays close attention to the transition of color, value, and mark, the artist can create believable leaves.

Collages, Montages, and Assemblages A collage is produced when an artist combines actual existing textured material into a twodimensional work of art. If an artist uses preexisting images, such as photos, in a collage, then it becomes a montage. An assemblage is an art object composed of actual items arranged together to be viewed as a whole.

Suggested Reading Leslie, Keeping a Nature Journal. O’Donnell, Sketchbook.

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Exercises 1. Take a tour through a home improvement store and look at the wide variety of simulated textures available. What does the implied texture add? What does the synthetic material offer that the real texture could not? Are you drawn to the simulated texture or repelled by it? Why? 2. Take a look at some of the designed objects in your home. How do they use texture? Is it real or implied texture? Do you tend to gravitate toward a certain type of texture, or does your space include a wide variety of textures? 3. Experiment with the visual impact of different textures by creating a collage, montage, or assemblage.

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LESSON 11 Visual Foundations:

Space

Space is the distance from one point to another. It can be real, like the space you’re currently in, or illusionary, like the space you see someone occupying on TV. This lesson focuses specifically on how artists and designers create the illusion of space in two dimensions through the design elements of scale and proportion.

The Picture Plane This lesson begins by discussing two-dimensional surfaces, like a piece of paper. A two-dimensional surface has height and width, but no depth. In art, this surface is called the picture plane. A two-dimensional surface is controlled by the edges of the picture plane. The picture plane can be a page of paper, a canvas, a piece of wood, or any other flat surface. Excellent artists use every inch of the picture plane to make the most of it. They don’t necessarily fill it up, but they do know how to divide and conquer the space. When an image stresses the two-dimensional aspect of an artwork, the artist has created a decorative or shallow space. This is often accomplished by highlighting surface geometry. Surface geometry refers to how the artist divides up the page. It exists in every two-dimensional art form. In shallow space, surface geometry activates the edges of the page, celebrating the flatness of the picture plane. There are often examples of this in schematic drawings, such as a subway map or a residential landscape plan.

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Tools for Artists and Designers Artists and designers have a number of tools available for manipulating and measuring space. One is the basic unit, which controls proportion and measures objects in relation to one another. Another tool is scale, which refers to the size of an object in relation most often to the human body. It also means the scale of the objects to the page or to the whole. Artists and designers use both meanings to refer to how big a shape is in relation to the picture plane. Diminution is another tool. The term diminution means the reduction in size of an object as it goes back in space. For an example, an artist could put a tree near the edge of the page and place a smaller tree behind Plastic Space it. This helps create space. An additional tool is atmospheric perspective. Atmospheric perspective is seen when an artist modulates color properties of forms to mimic what is seen in nature, giving the illusion of depth. Think of a mountain range where the closer trees seem bright and high contrast. The more distant trees tend to be more blue, gray, and fuzzy.

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In art, the term plastic space refers to the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. Plasticity is how an artist or designer uses elements to create tension in two dimensions. The illusion of space becomes especially apparent when artists start using different perspective systems.

Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

Linear Perspective Artists and designers who want to create space in three dimensions need to understand the basics of linear perspective. Perspective can create a fixed point of view, which works on the idea that a window into another world is being created. The edges of the window are the edges of the page. To create a fixed point of view, it is necessary to determine an eye level line. To see eye level in action, put a pencil horizontally up to your eyes and extend your hand outward. The pencil covers your actual eye level. It might be higher or lower depending on factors like whether you are sitting or standing. An artist can decide where to put an eye level line on the paper. It can be near the top, bottom, or middle of the page. Regardless, this is the first step to figuring out how to create a fixed point of view. Artists also have a choice to make when it comes to one-point perspective, two-point perspective, and more. In one-point perspective, the artist must follow the rule that all parallel lines seem to converge to a vanishing point on the horizon line. For two-point perspective, lines would seem to converge at two points, and so forth.

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Oblique Projection and Isometric Projection To show more than one side of an image, an artist or designer can use oblique projection or isometric projection. Oblique projection occurs when the front face of an object is displayed in full, while the side or top of an object is also visible. Isometric projection is similar, but it focuses on the edge or corner of the object. Isometric projection often shows two sides and the top of an object.

Oblique Projection

Isometric Projection

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Exercises 1. To practice surface geometry, set up a simple still life out of objects you have on hand. Use a viewfinder (such as an old slide cartridge or toilet paper tube) to define your composition. On a piece of paper, draw the frame of your view as a rectangle or circle, and then divide the picture plane based only on the shapes of what you see. Using only black and white, fill in the shapes so that the shape edges are defined by the value contrast. Remember, the point is not to create depth, but rather to create strong surface geometry. 2. Cut out two circles of the same size and practice arranging them on a sheet of paper in various ways. How can you arrange them so that the appearance of depth is created? Do they always appear as the same size? Draw a horizon line on your paper and place the circles in various positions relative to the horizon line. What is the effect? 3. Find an advertisement that you enjoy. Put a piece of tracing paper on top of the ad and trace the basic outline of the forms. Look at how the designer uses surface geometry.

Suggested Reading Agrawal, Built. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception.

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LESSON 12

Thinking in Three Dimensions Some artistic work stays on the surface of the picture plane. Other work pushes shapes into the picture plane, creating the illusion of depth. This lesson looks at what happens when an artist gives the picture plane itself some depth.

Low Relief Art One important option that allows for adding depth to a picture plane is relief art. In this usage, the term relief refers to any sculptural elements that sit on top of a flat surface. Relief making can happen in a few ways, one of which is low relief. In art that uses low relief, forms begin to stand out from a background. Impressions and etchings fall into this category. Low relief can also be accomplished by carving away the surface around the subject so that the subject is slightly raised. A low relief can also be created by adding material to a flat surface.

High Relief Art High relief involves a technique in which the shapes are still attached to the background, but they begin to separate by at least half of their depth. High relief art is often found attached to buildings. In high relief, artists begin to think less about carving an outline of the form and more about modeling the volume of the form. Understanding volume in high relief is part of standard training for artists. For instance, in a sculpture class, students may have to consider the height, width, and depth of a body part and use measuring techniques to copy what they see exactly in clay.

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Assemblages Relief sculpture does not have to be carved or cast. It can also be assembled. For instance, Louise Nevelson is a sculptor who works in high-relief assemblages with found objects. Nevelson’s sculptural method is not subtractive like carving, but rather additive: She layers and constructs pieces of wood to create a unified whole. Assemblages can be made of any type of material and composed in any number of ways. Another artist, Candy Cummings, assembles electronic parts much like Nevelson assembles wood.

Clothing Design Form plays a huge role in clothing and shoe design. The factor that can make a shoe or a suit a quality piece of design is the amount of attention given to the threedimensional form that each has or makes. The same is true for anything that has a height, width, and depth that captures your attention. Fashion designers, industrial designers, and sculptors have to understand the empty space that a form makes as well as the solid space. They have to understand volume and mass. For example, take a  dress. Volume is the empty space that the dress encloses. The mass is the body that fills the dress.

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A designer only designs the volume of a dress, but to do so, they have to consider the eventual mass that will occupy it—that is, how tall, short, wide, or narrow the mass might be. They also have to take into consideration the tensile strength of the material—that is, how the material will interact with the mass. The dress could be made out of silk, cotton, linen, satin, or something else, and each material will work to cover the mass differently. The same is true for a shoe. Considerations here include what type of material will work for the type of activity a person will undertake and how will the shoe attach to the foot. Additionally, all functional designers consider the mechanics of their products and how they will hold up over a period of time as well as how they look.

Suggested Reading Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, chapter 3. Elkins, The Object Stares Back.

Exercises 1. Use some air-dry clay and simple sculpting tools to practice creating various degrees of dimensionality. You can create a low relief piece by carving into the surface or building up the surface of your piece. Next, see if you can create high relief art by increasing the depth of the object relative to the base. If you prefer to work with something sweet, give this a shot with cookie dough, pie dough, or cake. 2. Use Popsicle sticks and a glue gun to create a freestanding sculpture. What additional considerations do you have to take into account when working entirely in three dimensions? How do you account for those in your process?

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LESSON 13

Building in Three Dimensions In math, volume is a quantity. In design, it is a quality. Anyone who designs anything three-dimensionally has to keep this in mind. This is especially true for architects, who design spaces—and therefore volumes.

Volume, Mass, and Strength One factor architects have to understand is the tensile strength of their material. Tensile strength is a measure of how much resistance a material has when put under pressure. For instance, brick has more tensile strength than straw. Architects need to know how much volume each form is capable of holding based on its material strength. Architects also need to understand the way volume contributes to the experience of a space. Architecture with huge volumetric spaces, like the Crystal Palace built in 1850, can seem light and weightless if constructed with certain materials, including glass. Meanwhile, small, enclosed volumetric spaces can feel comforting and cozy. Volume in structural design is always a conversation between the tensile strength of the materials and the objectives for the space.

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Volume is just one consideration, as some artists and designers work with mass as well. Masses can feel extremely light or heavy depending on the material. For instance, a sturdy leather couch contrasts with a couch made of lightweight foam resting on top of thin legs. The former seems strong, while the latter might give the illusion of elongating a room and opening the space. Designers, artists, and architects visualize mass and volume in many ways. Some make small models out of paper and tape. Others draw a schematic plan or use orthographic projection. Orthographic projection is a means of representing a three-dimensional object in two dimensions and from multiple sides and in exact distances. Another consideration is how each material provides visual and tactile elements. That can enormously impact how the space or the object feels and looks. For example, think of the visual and tactile differences between beeswax and wood. Architects, designers, and artists need to consider the experiential impact of their materials as well as their ability to create structural integrity. For instance, clay can work on a small scale, but it’s not ideal for large buildings or prioritizing regularity.

Scale and Proportion Scale and proportion also play a role in the work of architects, designers, and artists. The term scale refers to the relative size of something in relation to something else. The term proportion refers to the size of the parts to the whole. For instance, when it comes to proportion, a window that is too small can make a residential house look massive. A window that is too large might bring to mind a greenhouse. These are issues of proportion both aesthetically and practically.

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Scale also comes into play with architecture. For instance, a human body might seem tiny in a cathedral, but in a small chapel, a human body is much larger in relation to the size of the building.

Case Study: A Tiny House This lesson now turns a case study of volume, material, proportion, and scale in practice. The case study is a small house made by this course’s instructor, her colleague Barry Muchnick, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland undergraduate students. The house was the result of a  two-year teamtaught class in which the instructors introduced students to the basic ideas of community sustainable design. The house can sit on a trailer small enough to be pulled down the road behind a truck. It is approximately 20 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 13 feet tall. It has approximately 194 square feet inside and weighs about 10,000 pounds. For a house, this is very tiny. However, by paying close attention to material, proportion, and scale in every design decision, the team was able to make a space that is livable, durable, and sustainable. In addition to tensile strength, functionality, and aesthetics, the availability and transportability of materials inform the choices that are made in design and architecture. Over time, this can become an aesthetic on its own. As the team made material choices for the tiny house, they kept availability in mind.

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The team also looked carefully at the design choices of Frank Lloyd Wright, an architect who tried to utilize the best of industrialization with design that considered light, space, volume, and mass in specific and interesting ways. For instance, a typical Wrightdesigned Usonian house was on average 1,200 square feet, featuring a living area that reflected an open-concept floor plan. Because it had such a small footprint, it was a perfect example for the tinyhouse designers to study. The trailer dictated the exterior form of the house, and the team flipped the entrance to the house to allocate more space on the inside. The team used repurposed wood for the siding, which they had to refit to include. The inside features donated scrap wood. The students laid out the varying pieces of floorboards, creating a repeated diagonal pattern that makes the entire space feel much larger. Additionally, the team chose to go large with some features like the refrigerator and sink so that the house looked like a singlefamily dwelling. They went small with other features, such as the small cabinet and sink for the bathroom.

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Exercises 1. Create a structure that can hold your own weight, using nothing but three pieces of 11-by-14-inch poster board, scissors, and a roll of masking tape. Refer to the video lesson for a demonstration. Consider what choices you have to make about volume and material strength as you build. 2. Take a tour of different architectural spaces in your area. Ask yourself questions such as: What materials are used for what purposes? How do spaces with lots of volume treat material differently than smaller spaces? How does the function of the space dictate material and volume decisions? 3. Now that you understand the basics, think outside the box and imagine a space you have not experienced before. Ask yourself questions such as: What if the houses in a neighborhood didn’t face the street? What if every house had a workspace attached to it? Where would the best location be?

Suggested Reading Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, chapter 5. De Boton, The Architecture of Happiness.

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LESSON 14 The Limits of Space:

Visual Landscapes This lesson explores how artists and designers navigate space through the idea of landscape. Keep in mind that landscape is not a simple concept. It can mean many things, take many forms, and apply to almost all aspects of our experience.

Linear Perspective When creating landscapes, designers often take advantage of a very effective and universal visual element: linear perspective. This technique guides the eye and the body so precisely and effectively that it gives the artist or designer almost complete control over the viewer. To employ linear perspective effectively, an artist or designer must do the following: Overlap forms to create illusionistic space. For instance, a group of overlapping bushes will create more of an illusion of space than bushes in a horizontal row. Use diminution to create illusionistic space. Diminution is the illusion that as things are closer to a  viewer, the viewer perceives them as larger. Measure and use relative scale. Finding a basic unit of measurement, whether in drawing or in city planning, is a way of controlling scale and proportion throughout the space. The human body is often used as a basic point of reference. Use convergence to create deep space. The idea that parallel lines converge to a point on a horizon line is essential to linear perspective.

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Oblique or Axonometric Projection Linear perspective is not the only perspective system that we experience or that artists use to create space. If an artist or designer wants to create an object or space that inspires a feeling of tension, excitement, and uncertainty, they might employ a system known as oblique or axonometric projection. Isometric perspective falls into this category. Unlike in linear perspective, lines do not converge upon a central point in oblique projection. This disrupts the sense of order and balance. Many game designers and architects might use these types of projections working with mathematical software, but fine artists would more likely use an isometric sketch or an oblique sketch. They would follow these guidelines: Parallel lines do not converge. For instance, in a city plan that employs isometric perspective, the streets are not lined with buildings that converge to a central point. Show more than one view of an object at once. This gives the artist the capability of telling many stories at once. Make gesture or texture more important than space. If a  calligraphic mark or repetitive action made by the hand becomes the central characteristic of an art form, then the creation of a surface and gesture reigns supreme. Highly regard histories and embed them in whatever you make or purchase. For instance, photographs are not merely images, but objects that represent a time and place. Buildings represent values, and they differ in material and scale based on meaning.

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Landscapes of Nature Landscapes of nature challenge our ideas of order, power, scale, and human importance. For instance, imagine a landscape of trees that jet so high that they make any human viewer feel insignificant. Many artists consider landscapes of nature as doorways to spiritual truth, putting us in touch with the infinite and the timeless. Here are some of their secrets for capturing that in art and design: Alter the scale and shift the experience of proportion. Seeing yourself next to the scale of an ancient structure or next to a redwood tree is a humbling and life-altering experience. It also informs your scale choices as an artist. For instance, by drastically altering the scale of a thing in relation to the land, you increase your visual power to describe nature’s otherness. Go to remote places. Landscape photographers like Sandra Senn and Galen Rowell are as much adventurers as they are artists. No matter the medium, artists and designers can speak to primal parts of the human experience by capturing the natural world, un-manipulated by man’s interference. Control light. One element of natural landscapes that contributes to their power is the strength, direction, and quality of light. Natural light is an endless source of inspiration for artists, and they sometimes go to great lengths to capture and manipulate it. Employ the laws of continuity. A previous lesson discussed the Gestalt principles of psychology. One of these principles is the principle of continuity. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, our brains assume that lines continue endlessly in the same direction that we experience them. Artists can use this principle to create vast spaces by extending lines and forms beyond the picture plane or into the horizon line.

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Unique Experiences The experience of a landscape of nature is often universal. It evokes the same sense of awe or wonder or stillness or smallness in each of us. However, we all bring unique memories and identities to our experience of landscape. Contemporary artists have been increasingly interested in capturing this variety of experience. Some members of the artistic community desire to capture and explore the unique properties of space in a given place or a community, seen through the lens of individual experiences. These artists are trying to establish landscapes of identity, combining the essential properties of a singular space with the essential properties of a singular point of view. To do this, they might use material that is indigenous to a place or patterns and colors that are particular to a region. They also might become familiar with and use vernacular symbols of specific cultures. One artist who pursues this idea beautifully is the painter Kayla Mohammadi. Mohammadi lives in Boston half of the year, travels to Maine for the other half, and grew up on the West Coast with Finnish and Iranian parents. The way she perceives the northeastern landscape is altered by her intimate knowledge of other cultures and the negotiation of those cultures in her everyday lived experience. Where one artist may see and paint a sunrise with broad bands of color that recede according to the laws of atmospheric perspective, Mohammadi’s paintings show a sunrise in motion that vibrates and shimmers through a series of shapes and patterns.

Suggested Reading Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. Lippard, Lure of the Local.

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Exercise: Learning to See and Untangle Navigating the concept and experience of landscape can be an enlightening and challenging visual literacy skill. It involves not just learning to see, but also learning to untangle your individual experience of a landscape from its natural, historical, cultural, or designed aspects. To do this, you need to be able to encounter familiar spaces with fresh eyes and unfamiliar spaces with informed eyes. You can try doing this in your own spaces. For instance, try entering your kitchen as a new space, unguided by your ingrained knowledge of where the coffeemaker is and your memories of experiences in the space. Observe how this changes your perception of the space. Conversely, try entering a new, unfamiliar space. Do so with the intention of understanding how someone intimate with that space might experience it.

Additional Exercises 1. Find three landscapes (either in person or in art). Find one that is constructed using principles of linear perspective, one that is a landscape of place built over many centuries, and one that is a landscape of nature. Consider how your experience of scale, freedom, history, and emotion differ in each. 2. Become familiar with local artists and artisans in your area. How are they using their art to create landscapes of identity? Alternatively, create a landscape of identity yourself. What materials and methods can you choose to capture your unique perspective of your own environment? 3. Walk on a historic property. Repeat the walk multiple times. Get up close to the buildings and notice the material. Take pictures or draw to document. Stand far away and notice the distance.

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LESSON 15

Principles of Design This lesson looks at the principles of design that are at work in the creation of any art object. Learning these principles can help you begin composing like an artist in your everyday life. The lesson provides a foundation for understanding the principles of design, tools to improve your ability to follow some of the principles, and methods to explore.

Composing In visual art contexts, the term composing refers to the actual task of organizing an art object and creating order. For instance, a grid is one way of imposing order, and there are many additional ways to organize and compose objects. Another method is the rule of thirds. When our eye is pleased with an image, it tends to be an image divided into thirds. Many cameras provide a grid that breaks down the viewfinder into thirds to help the photographer work with the rule of thirds, organizing the subject matter along the intersection of the lines. Another way to achieve order in a composition is to use the golden ratio, which is another compositional rule. The proportions of the object are divided up according to a mathematical ratio. The golden ratio describes a perfectly symmetrical relationship between two proportions. Finally, there is also the rule of odds. This rule states that odd numbers of anything work better in a work of art than even numbers.

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Relationships and Design Principles It is important to understand that a composition is the arrangement of visual elements in relationship to one another. The relationship component is key. For instance, an artist or designer can give emphasis to one form over another by thinking about where to place or group it. Design principles are organized into categories to help people articulate and understand what they are creating. The following sections of this guidebook chapter provide an overview of several design principles.

Unity and Variety Unity happens in a work of art when there is a common visual element, like a grid. If you want to make an art object that has a sense of cohesion and stability, unity is the way to go. Repetition is another powerful way to establish unity. A third strategy for creating unity is to use continuity— that is, making actual or implied connections between forms. This often lends a sense of fluidity to the piece. Finally, an artist can establish a sense of unity by creating a boundary around an image or form. As we saw when we looked at assemblage, sometimes simply enclosing a disparate group of items within some sort of frame can be enough to establish them as a unified object. Unity’s counterpart is variety. If you want your choices to reflect energy, motion, and change, variety is a good tool to use. For instance, you can expand your color palette in a room or mix textures in your wardrobe.

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Emphasis and Democratizing If you want to give a prominence to a particular part of a design, then you can compose a focal point in the composition and use the design principle of emphasis. For instance, many artists throughout history have placed forms in the center of a composition, used color to draw the eye, or isolated a form to call attention to it. Another method that artists employ for emphasis is to contrast two or more elements. For example, imagine wearing all black with the exception of green shoes. This would be a way of drawing attention to the feet. The opposite of applying emphasis is democratizing the art object so that every element has equal value. For instance, this can be an excellent choice if you are making wallpaper and you want a repeated pattern to make a subtle texture but not to overpower a room.

Balance Balance occurs when the artistic composer juggles different forces and makes a composition that appears visually stable or is actually stable. There are different ways to apply the principle of balance. The rule of thirds, the golden ratio, and the rule of odds automatically include design thinking in terms of balance, and there are other methods of achieving balance as well.

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Symmetrical balance is determined by a central axis that is either vertical or horizontal. Everything in the composition on either side of the central axis is exactly equal. Balance can also be achieved if a point in space is established and everything coming off of that point in space is weighted equally. This is called radial symmetry. If forms are not identical but are still arranged around a central axis or point, the setup is called approximate symmetry. Meanwhile, asymmetrical balance depends on the artist understanding weight and gravity, and arranging the elements so that they do not mirror each other. This allows the artist to create compositions that verge on the edge of chaos or give the illusion of dynamic motion.

Proportion and Scale An understanding of proportion and scale is critical to the practical process of making art. For instance, if you want to draw a seven-foot horse on a one-foot sketchpad, you need to know proportion and scale, and you need a standard unit of measurement that can be used to express the relationship between the two sizes. For instance, if you were to draw the horse grazing under a tree, you would have to consider relative size and establish a standard measurement to ensure proportion. You would also need to consider the size of the drawn horse relative to the size of the real horse, the size of the drawn tree relative to the real tree, and the size of the drawn horse relative to the drawn tree.

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There are certain tools that can help you navigate proportion and scale. For instance, a proportional divider is a tool that easily increases or decreases the size of a subject to draw. A pantograph is a similar tool that helps with scale changes in a drawing or a floor plan. Other useful tools include a grid, proportional scale, viewfinder, and projector. Finally, technological tools like a copier and software like Photoshop can also be of use.

Exercises 1. Take a tour of your home and look at it from the point of view of a designer. Which principles of design have you used in your space? Do you prefer unity or variety? Are you drawn to symmetry in your rooms? How do proportion and scale function in the different areas of your home? 2. Choose one principle of design and practice it. You might practice proportion and scale by designing a stamp. Alternatively, you might create a work using an unusual tool like a typewriter or stapler to see how the tool affects your design choices. If the pictures on your wall are arranged symmetrically, experiment with an asymmetrical arrangement. Push yourself out of your design comfort zones. You can always return to them later. 3. The next time you are preparing to buy a car, outfit, or piece of jewelry, ask yourself: How does the design of the object express who you are?

Suggested Reading Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Williams, The Non-Designer’s Design Book.

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LESSON 16

Exploring Visual Time Artists, designers, and visually literate people have the advantage of visually interpreting time in a variety of ways. This lesson provides an overview of several of the ways time is reflected in art and design choices.

Time in Art All art objects reflect the literal time it took to create the object—that is, the creation time. For instance, a photograph with a snapshot aesthetic may have an unedited, in-the-moment kind of feeling. Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings cannot be viewed without experiencing the drip-by-drip, rotating method of his application. By comparison, an art object could also reflect extraordinary amounts of creation time, like James Turrell’s Roden Crater or the Sistine Chapel. Either way, our experience as viewers is profoundly influenced by the creation time needed to make the object. Another factor is the time it takes to view an art object—that is, the duration. If the art object is an installation piece, the viewer is required to walk into and through a space. The pace of the viewer and the display choices of the museum showing the work determine the experience of it. For example, Yayoi Time is present in everyone’s Kusama’s Infinity visual choices. For instance, Mirror Rooms are someone dressed carefully a timed event for the for an important meeting viewer, allowing each represents a different creation person a specific time than someone dressed amount of time in the in sweatpants to head to the space. This concept is grocery store. true of any designed space, from museum and gallery curation to restaurant design. In these instances, the viewer moves through the space, and the space remains fixed.

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If there is a clear beginning and ending, and the object is moving but the viewer is still, then the viewer has less control over the pace of the experience. A film is an example of this. By contrast, in print design, the viewer can flip through the pages in their own time and space. The viewer has control over how much observation time is embedded in the object. Time can also be expressed in a piece itself. It could be a moment in time that is captured in an image. Additionally, there are ways to indicate the progress of time, perhaps by framing and sequencing.

Using Time to Communicate This lesson now turns to look at some ways you can practice seeing and expressing time. You can use it to your advantage as a visual communicator. For instance, you can keep creation time in mind when you visually determine whether something is handmade or mass produced. Even the buildings that you pass on your daily walk or drive can communicate creation time. Often, if a building takes decades to complete, the material tells the tale. For duration, mobiles provide an interesting way of viewing the concept. Try finding a mobile—whether one displayed in a place like a gallery or meant for a baby’s nursery—and looking at it. As you observe it, ask yourself: What is the duration time for this piece? If you’re so inclined, you can try making a mobile yourself. There are ample instructions online for doing this. As you construct your mobile, think about what you imagine the duration time to be. Ask yourself: How long do you want the viewer to experience the piece? How can you indicate that? Options include setting it to a piece of music or creating a repetitive movement.

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To get a sense of how compositional choices convey a  moment or progression of time, grab your camera and create a sense of time through the images that you choose. For instance, three images of a cup during various stages of making tea can show the progression of time.

Time in a Sequence There are many ways an artist or designer might indicate time in a sequence, and some ways lend themselves more easily to narrative than others. An illustrator could experiment with transition. A transition is how the artist moves from frame to frame. For instance, an artist might indicate the passage of time in a conversation by switching from face to face in different frames. Transitions can be applied to more than just narrative art. An interior decorator could experiment with the same idea from room to room, using themes, color, or texture to extend or shift an experience through time. A visual designer can also change the chronology of frames so that we view the order of events in a linear sequence or in a flashback. Viewers tend to automatically assume that things shown in sequence are communicating linear chronology, so when artists or designers decide to employ flashback, they often have to include visual clues to alert the viewer.

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A designer can slow down or speed up the tempo of how we view the object. The medium and the artist often determine the tempo of an art object. For instance, a flipbook would have a faster tempo than a nine-panel comic strip. A film would have even a faster tempo, even though its duration is longer. In two-dimensional art, an artist might also indicate a sense of time through implied motion. How an artist or designer treats space can also contribute to a sense of motion, rhythm, and time. They might use strategies like division, fragmentation, and multiplication. Division is how a designer divides up a space. The division of space can guide the direction, pace, and duration with which a viewer’s eyes travel across the image. To see this in action, the next time you navigate a website, see if you can determine how division is being used. Fragmentation is when an object occupies several positions in a field of vision. Fragmentation can be a powerful way to compress multiple impressions of time and motion into one image experience. It is often a favorite of artists looking to explore the relationship between time and identity. Multiplication is when there is a repeated form moving through a space, indicating motion through time. An example would be a composite of multiple images of the Sun as captured at the same time from the same place throughout the year.

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Finally, the term time-based media refers to any artwork that has a set duration that unfolds to the viewer over a period of actual time. The obvious examples of this are films, videos, and animations. However, timebased media is becoming more prevalent in everyday experiences. For instance, rather than having an actual fireplace, a house might make use of a looping video of a fireplace.

Suggested Reading Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception. Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art.

Exercises 1. Get a sense of how creation time is expressed by creating art with a variety of creation times. Create a drawing in 30 seconds. Then create one in 15 minutes. Finally, create a drawing over the course of a week. Where do you see evidence of the creation time in the finished pieces? 2. Pick up a comic book or check out your favorite comic strip. How does the artist make compositional choices to indicate a progression of time? 3. Leave a note for a loved one using a wordless message. Use only pictures and think about how you will convey meaning by the images that you draw. If you are not comfortable drawing, use your phone to take pictures.

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LESSON 17

Strategies for Visual Storytelling Art that puts narrative at the forefront is a unique form of visual expression, and also likely one of the oldest. The need to tell the stories of histories, cultures, desires, sorrows, fears, and hopes through images is the basis for all narrative art. Every culture has examples of narrative art, and narrative art spans across every medium. This lesson provides an overview of the subject and tips for visual storytelling.

Components of a Visual Narrative To be a visual narrative, a piece of art has to have the following elements: Characters that can act out the story. A narrative cue to alert the brain and activate the eye. A sense of sequence. Visual scholars at the Indian Institute of Technology have set out three distinct visual narrative types based on certain characteristics: a static visual narrative, a dynamic visual narrative, and an interactive visual narrative. A static visual narrative is anything that has a still image and unfolds in actual space. Examples include comics, paintings, scrolls, murals, illuminated manuscripts, and narratives on objects, photos, and graphics. These are the characteristics of a static visual narrative: They unfold in actual space. The visual image is fixed in place to a surface. They depend on the viewer gaining knowledge from previous frames or scenes. The viewer chooses how fast or slow they proceed through the story. Contemplation time is abundant and controlled by the viewer. Movement is implied and is a result of the viewer moving from one scene or frame to another.

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A dynamic visual narrative is a moving image. Examples include cinema, animation, and projected moving images. These are the characteristics of a dynamic visual narrative: They tell stories through time. Visuals are viewed through a series of rapid successions. The viewer does not have access to previous images once they have happened. The visuals move, but the viewer is fixed. The maker controls the speed and pace of the viewing. There is not unlimited contemplation time. Movement is implied through rapid succession of images. An interactive visual narrative is an image that could be moving or could be still. Additionally, it depends on the viewer to unfold the story. Examples include interactive picture books, interactive games, and other virtual worlds. These are the characteristics of an interactive visual narrative: Time extends through many possible paths. Visuals can appear fixed, but they can change based on the viewer. Viewers can access prior visual knowledge of parts of the story, but the story doesn’t depend on prior knowledge. Speed determination varies between maker and viewer. The viewer can manipulate the story. The story requires active participation from the viewer.

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Static Visual Narrative Skills: One Frame This lesson now looks at basic skills found in static visual narratives. Once you have learned these skills, you can apply them to the other two types. If you want to tell a story with only one frame, as is the case with a painting or illustration, all of the time takes place within the border of the frame. By using scale, placement, and direction, an artist can control the way a viewer’s eye moves through the composition, weaving a nonlinear story together. To practice this, try the following activity. It involves starting at the center of a drawing and moving outward toward the edge to add to the story: Begin with a 2-by-2-inch piece of paper. Draw an important character or piece of your story. Glue that piece of paper to a larger, 6-by-6-inch piece of paper and add to the story. Glue the 6-by-6-inch piece of paper to a 12-by-12inch piece of paper and add to the story. Glue the 12-by-12-inch piece of paper to a 22-by-22inch piece of paper and complete your story.

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Static Visual Narrative Skills: Multiple Frames An artist using more than one frame is making sequential art—that is, art depicting two or more images to tell a story. To tell a story, the illustrator uses a beginning, middle, and end. The first step in visualizing any story is to figure out which moments are most important and how you want to capture them. One way to get an idea of this is to use a stack of sticky notes and draw out a story. This can let you see the basic storyline. From here, you can decide how many frames to use to tell your story. You can also decide on the order of the story as well as if you want to collapse multiple sticky notes into one frame, reducing the amount of contemplation time between images. In the end, you will produce a storyboard that can act as a guide for your work.

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Exercises 1. Choose a personal event and experiment with ways to create a visual narrative of it. You could use one frame, starting small in the center and adding around the edges as the narrative progresses. Or you could create a sequence by drawing various scenes on sticky notes or in storyboarding software. Consider how you will indicate time, motion, and consequence visually. 2. Look at some examples of photojournalism. What visual choices are made to convey a story? Is the story told all in one frame, or is there a sequence of photographs? How are compositional choices used to convey narrative progress and emotion? 3. Choose an old family photograph. If you don’t have one, find one in an antique store. Describe the photograph as an object. Describe what you see in the photograph. What elements in the photograph convey a narrative? How does the narrative relate to you in the present?

Suggested Reading Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art. McCloud, Understanding Comics, chapter 4.

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LESSON 18

Symbol, Subject, Content, and Context We encounter signs and symbols thousands of times each day. They speak to us, and they guide our actions and emotions in ways we often don’t consciously realize. This lesson covers symbols and the related topics of subject matter, content, and context.

Symbols At a basic level, symbols convey information. Signs, logos, and trademarks are all common types of visual symbols that designers and companies use to convey information. For instance, logos can become embedded in people’s memories, which is often the intent of logo designers. However, recognition of meaning does not necessarily convey easily from location to location or generation to generation. Even with compelling symbols, context matters. For instance, in his book Medieval Graffiti, the archaeologist Matthew Champion brings into focus the scratchings found in churches throughout medieval England. One such image was a composite of circular designs that seemed to have organic forms such as flowers in them. Champion argues these scratchings have a much deeper meaning. Archaeologists have discovered that people were allowed to mark the walls of the churches to ward off evil spirits and to pray for loved ones. These markings are not just casual graffiti; they are secret symbols of the spiritual anxieties and desires of an everyday person living in a difficult age.

Symbols versus Icons Symbols have context and intent, and they usually bear no resemblance to the thing they represent. For instance, the famous Nike swoop looks nothing like a running shoe. Icons also represent ideas, but they usually look like the objects they represent. Icons are everywhere, and they often help people navigate. Take, for instance, a gasstation icon on the side of a highway.

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Subject Matter and Content In the case of an art object, the depicted object itself is the subject matter. To recognize subject matter, the viewer has to take inventory of what is seen. For instance, if a fabric pattern repeats a bird form, then the pattern has birds as subject matter. Subject matter and content are often jumbled together when students and even teachers talk about art. However, the difference is important. Content is the impact or meaning of an art object. Symbols can have content and subject matter. In fact, they must have both to operate effectively as a symbol. Content moves beyond the formal aspects of the art and is connected to why the artist made the object in the first place. Although subject matter and content are different, they are impossible to separate. For instance, if a student produces a drawing of a bird, it can never simply have the subject matter of a bird. The viewer will try to figure out what kind of bird it is. The viewer will also figure out if the bird has meaning by consulting the matrix of bird associations they have built up over the years of their lived experience. In essence, as long as the art has a viewer, subject matter and content are a package deal.

Context The final piece of the puzzle is how context affects our understanding of symbols, subject matter, and content. For instance, a statue meant to be seen from below might look less impressive when viewed at eye level. It will be out of context.

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To assess the context of a work, you can ask yourself questions such as these: What was the artist’s intention when creating this work? Who commissioned it? Who was its intended audience? It is common to assume that a piece of art was meant to be viewed by the general public. However, many art objects are made for private consumption. For instance, a prayer book from the 14th century was most likely intended for a few wealthy individuals as a personal devotional, not for the common people. Along with the circumstances of an object’s creation, context also refers to the circumstances of its viewing. Artists and designers think carefully about context in relation to exhibition and installation design. For example, an approach that works in a university gallery setting may not work at all in a corporate office space or residential home. Context can become more complicated when appropriation is involved. Appropriation occurs when an artist or designer borrows, copies, or alters preexisting images, objects, and ideas. Additionally, keep in mind that the ability to alter existing images and change their meanings can create challenges if the intent is one of malice or manipulation. It is in your best interest to question what you see— that is, to the best of your ability, you should place each image or object you encounter in context.

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Exploring Context Exploring context in art can be an endlessly rewarding task. If you’re interested, take an art history class online or through a museum. Many museums have education programs. Every art object you encounter has layers of context. Those layers range from the individual character of the artist, to the broader cultural situation in which the art was made, to the intended space and audience of the piece. If you like an object that you see from another culture, find out everything you can about that object in the context of the culture it was meant to serve. If you can, travel to the place where the object was made and see how it is produced. The more context you can add to your experience of a piece, the richer its meaning will become.

Suggested Reading Champion, Medieval Graffiti. Liungman, Dictionary of Symbols.

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Exercises 1. Take one of the many logo quizzes available online. Look at each of the logos and note how they are designed. How do they use color, shape, and line to convey essential aspects of their brand? How would you go about designing your own logo for your family or group? 2. Visit a museum and consider how context relates to the content of what you see. Where was the object originally meant to be seen? How is it presented in the museum? How does the changed context affect your sense of meaning? 3. Place an object in your house totally out of context. For instance, you might place an antique tool in the middle of your dining table and use it to hold candles. You might start a trend or find a new way to use an object.

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LESSON 19 Making Choices:

Material, Method, and Style Material is a consideration for every visual artist, no matter the dimension or scale they work in. This lesson looks into how that consideration affects decisions during the creative process.

Weight Weight is an important factor for artists and designers to consider. Artists and designers think about weight in two ways: the visual weight of a form or object in a composition and the physical weight of the material used to create the object. If the visual weight of a form or object in a composition is too heavy, it can alter the experience for the viewer and throw off the sense of balance. If the visual weight is too light, it may not hold the viewer’s attention enough. If the physical weight of the material is too light in a sculpture, then it can break off during the construction process or fly off if exposed to  the elements. If the physical weight of an object is too heavy, it can make moving the object overly difficult.

Tensile Strength and Durability In addition to weight, an artist or designer needs to consider the tensile strength of a material. Tensile strength refers to how strong and how malleable a material is. In other words, tensile strength indicates how much pressure a material can handle before giving way.

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This could be the reason an artist chooses one type of wood, metal, or tool over another. For instance, it would not be a good idea to make a table out of balsa wood, which would crack and break under the weight of objects placed on the table. Another characteristic an artist or designer may look for in choosing a material is durability. For instance, if you are making something that is going to be placed on the exterior of your house, then the type of paint you use will be just as important as the type of support material.

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Cost and Availability Cost is another essential ingredient that designers and artists must consider when they are determining material. Scale plays a role here. For instance, the cost of using cadmium red in a painting that measures mere inches is very different than the cost of using cadmium red in a painting that measures in feet. Even if you’re not working on large-scale projects, material costs can add up. If you are a painter, it can be helpful to buy a good set of earth-toned or classical inorganic colors and a set of synthetic or modern organic colors. Both types are relatively inexpensive compared to inorganic mineral-based colors. Artists and designers are also limited in their selection of materials by availability factors. It is important to consider where it is possible to get the material that you need in time and in the quantity you need for production.

Toxicity Environmental and safety factors are important determinations in the choosing of material. One example of this is the toxicity of a material. When using any material, an artist or designer should always consider the larger impact of the material on the environment. For instance, acrylic paint is plastic, and its production and use has an effect on our world.

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Material Creativity Material choices inform, limit, challenge, and sometimes inspire artists and designers into new ways of thinking and doing. These choices aren’t limited to the type of material. The methods an artist or designer chooses to manipulate the material also carry meaning in a work of art. For instance, when using additive methods, an artist adds material to make the work. Stacking, layering, modeling, hammering, knitting, gluing, and assembling are examples of additive methods. Meanwhile, subtractive methods come into play when an artist takes away material to make a work. Examples of subtractive methods include cutting, carving, removing, erasing, and casting.

Trial and Error The material choices and methods an artist or designer chooses are almost always a result of trial and error. When you are beginning to figure out materials and methods when making your own objects, make sure you leave room for experimentation and failure.

Style The concept of style is one of the most confusing aspects for beginners when looking at art objects or making art objects. Style is the distinctive characteristic of an art object. It can provide the overall ambience of an object and indicate historical or cultural setting. Style is not a habit. For instance, repeating the same thing over and over out of fear of making a mistake is a habit, not a style. Likewise, forgoing the planning process and jumping straight to solutions is a habit, not a style. Additionally, style is not artistic method, nor is it medium.

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It can be helpful to think of style in terms of voice. Your style, like your voice, is part of you. You are born with it. However, like a voice, style can change over time. These changes may be large or subtle, but they adapt to express you at any given moment. In fact, one good clue that something is your style is that it changes when you change.

Exercises 1. Practice your material literacy by going through your shoe collection or visiting a shoe store. Note the many different types of materials used. See if you can decipher the design considerations for each of them. Was the material chosen for its strength, weight, function, or visual appeal? Does the material serve the aesthetic design, or does the aesthetic design serve the material? 2. Start thinking about and documenting your style. What visual choices do you make? Are they made out of habit? Do you have a certain creative process that you always follow? Once you’ve noticed a pattern, try something new. See how your style emerges when you break your habits. 3. The easiest way to start thinking about your style is to look at documentation. Go through some old photographs and look at a span of 10 years. What visual choices do you make? If looking at yourself is not your first choice, then look at a famous person.

Suggested Reading Hockney, Secret Knowledge. Young, ed., Encyclopedia of Landscape Design.

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LESSON 20

Cultivating Creative Habits Every artist has his or her own way of getting down to visual business. Most would say it has less to do with a muse and more to do with starting an intentional habit. Making room to see and to be creative involves habits that one builds purposely. Creative habits give you choices for living an artistic life. This lesson looks at how you can cultivate them.

The Creative Habit There are many self-help books that give advice on how to be an artist or to think like an artist. One notable example is a book by Twyla Tharp called The Creative Habit. Tharp is a world-renowned choreographer, dancer, and author. Tharp clearly links everyday creative habits to hard work, discipline, and consistency. She doesn’t start her day by naming the big questions and trying to answer them. Instead, she makes little choices to set herself up on the path to explore new ideas. These little choices are habits. She writes that to build creative habits, it helps to decide on little things like waking every day at the same time, walking the same path, going to the same gym, and finding a small place to be quiet and work. Tharp is able to dance, choreograph, write, and collaborate over and over because her creative routine is embedded in her life.

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Setting the Stage It can be helpful to determine a time of day when you can focus on building your artistic habits. This doesn’t have to be complicated, but you do have to find a space that is easy to access. For instance, you might keep a journal right by your bed to use when you wake up each morning. Once you find a place and time that works on a regular basis, try using these strategies to free yourself from constraint and support your efforts to remain curious and open to the visual world: Remove any unnecessary technology from your room or workspace. Take advantage of the early morning hours. Open space up before the demands of the day kick in. (If morning is not for you, then find a time that does work.) Keep whatever tools you want to use for capturing your creative thoughts organized and handy.

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Creating Habits Once you have the stage set, repeat your creative routine again and again. Try for six out of seven days. If that is too intense to start, try every other day. Keep in mind that the idea is to establish a pattern for creativity to happen. Once you have a routine, the next step is to identify some artistic habits that you want to grow. For instance, at the start of your routine, you might want to allow yourself the habit to simply see. That means taking time to look at light, texture, and space, and documenting each experience. This beginning is never about producing a product. Instead, this routine is a way to be true to your most artistic self. There are infinite ways you can fill this time. Here are some suggestions that you can try out: Drawing. For instance, you might document your earliest awake experiences by quickly drawing from life in sketch form. Reading. For example, you might keep some magazines around to look at in the early morning. Writing. For instance, you might take notes, journal, write out ideas, and make connections between things you read and see. Additionally, you will want to identify and address any preexisting habits that may distract you. For instance, if email and social media drag your attention away, make sure the time you set aside to be creative is free of those.

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Nurturing Habits Once you set the stage and find your artistic habits, the next step is to nurture and maintain them over time. Be mindful of the fact that it can be quite easy to lose a habit. Take care to set aside the time you need to maintain your habits. Giving yourself the time to engage simply with the world of visual ideas, without being concerned with producing or achieving anything particular, will reveal to you what you are drawn to. It will reveal what stimulates creative thought in you as well as what you think and see that no one else does. This is a way to get in touch with your creative self on an intimate level. As it becomes a habit, you will find your confidence in your artistic voice growing, and you will start discovering a world of ways to express that voice throughout your day.

Suggested Reading Tharp, The Creative Habit. Truitt, Daybook.

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Exercises 1. Establish a habit that sets the stage for creativity. Find a regular place and time where you can devote yourself to visual engagement, whether sketching, reading, writing about what you see, or simply observing. Ideally, this would be a 30-minute stretch at the same time every day. You could also try 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night. Limit your commitment and document what you do. For instance, try committing for three weeks to the same time and place, and document what you do in a journal or on your phone. 2. As you develop this habit, notice how your experience of the world changes. Do you find yourself more visually conscious? How does that impact you?

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LESSON 21 The Visual Life:

Active Observation Developing a set of visual literacy skills is very useful. However, integrating those skills into a lived experience is perhaps the most important step. Becoming a visually literate active observer and creative thinker takes practice. This lesson starts to explore that process.

Distance from the Subject Artists and designers are trained to distance themselves from the subject matter of what they’re seeing. A similar process happens in other professions: A doctor cannot be emotionally wrapped up in every individual patient. They have to be caring, but also logical and connected to the problem apart from the person. In essence, they are able to distance themselves from the individual situation to identify the problem and evaluate a projected path appropriately. The same is true when one is using design-minded thinking. If you can document what you are seeing, identify the problem at hand, and distance yourself from the subject, you may be able to focus on a powerful visual solution or opportunity.

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Becoming an Active Observer To apply your visual literacy skills toward problem solving and creation, becoming an active observer is key. For instance, one way you might practice this is measuring a space with different metrics, such as breaths or steps taken to get across a room. Then, produce drawings and a painting that reflect the scale of your observations. Additionally, keep in mind that seeing the world sometimes requires a new perspective. Changing your actual physical point of view may jolt your brain into wakeup mode and change the way you see an everyday situation. Another way to change your perspective is by traveling to a new place. For instance, many artists will travel great distances to see natural phenomena or eat an authentic food from a particular area. You can also read complex articles and books. By stretching your mind and going further than you think possible, you continue to learn. When you read something that you don’t understand, highlight what you don’t know and look it up later. Another technique is to sit for a long time with objects of design, whether they are your creations or someone else’s. Keep the world out and sit with these things. See if your first impressions change and if the object speaks to you visually over time instead of all at once. Finally, you can change things up by switching between media. For instance, you might write about what you just drew, videotape an idea, draw a graphic diagram that explains a concept you just discovered, or switch up materials.

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Types of Thinking To figure out what to do with what you see, a possible first step is to identify a problem. An example of this would be a designer coming up with a way to make trash disposal more efficient. This is known as convergent thinking: There is a predetermined goal, and through a step-by-step method, a solution is presented. Sometimes in art, the predetermined goal is solving a problem that an artist or designer has found. Sometimes the goal is predetermined by a client, and the artist or designer works to find a solution for the client. Not all observing involves convergent thinking, however. For instance, divergent thinking is a type of visually led brainstorming. The goal is not predetermined. Through searching, you begin to make  connections and inferences from what you observe. For instance, you might write a descriptive essay about an object at your workplace. By writing down everything that you see, you can look back at your writing and start brainstorming, generating new ideas and ways to look at the object.

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The Next Steps All designed things give clues to the culture and time period in which and for which they were made. Once you are comfortable or challenged by observation and begin to think critically through divergent or convergent ways of thinking, you can take the next steps to processing information and providing a context and analysis for the object or visual situation. You can start by simply comparing the object you are looking at to another object. By comparing and contrasting, you might be able to start inferring the intentions of the artist or the goal of the client. You may also look again for more information about the object. What material is it made out of? Who commissioned it? Where was it intended to be viewed? How was it used? These are all legitimate starting questions to open up the door to more sustained research.

Suggested Reading Elkins, The Object Stares Back. Pink, A Whole New Mind.

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Exercises 1. Practice active observation by training yourself to look without assigning meaning. Observe an object or your surroundings without coming to conclusions about what you see. See objects as shapes and colors separate from meaning. See the shape of the space between objects. 2. To practice divergent observation, try finding a designed object to describe. Look at it for 15 minutes and write down everything that you notice. If possible, determine the height, width, and depth of the object. Take note of the medium and material used. Describe in words what the object looks like. Produce a quick sketch of it. Name the subject matter in the piece if it has one, and describe any formal visual elements that the artist or designer used. 3. Disrupt your visual assumptions by looking at things from a new perspective. Lie down and look up. Climb up and look down. Look at things inside out, upside down, from very close, or from a great distance. Put objects in different environments. Document the new observations by sketching, photographing, or journaling. 4. Establish one or multiple sketchbooks. Have a range of media on hand at home and while traveling to document what you observe. Don’t worry about the quality of what you draw. You’re using drawing to practice seeing, not the other way around.

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LESSON 22 The Visual Life:

Exploring and Connecting Creative thinkers set the stage for living an artistic day, create habits that cultivate and support their artistic intentions, and practice the skill of active observation at every opportunity. They also seek out new ways of thinking about and seeing the world, which is the focus of this lesson.

Embracing the Unfamiliar Big ideas can come from unexpected places. Original thoughts rarely pop up in a vacuum. More often, original thoughts come when people look at seemingly unrelated ideas and find connections. The first step is to be open to looking for ideas in places that are unfamiliar. For instance, if you do not visit libraries often, going to your local library might be incredibly fruitful for connecting disparate ideas. The same goes for a bookstore. Start by going down an aisle that contains books that might fall naturally in your comfort zone. Once you pick up a few, choose another aisle with books that you may never normally pick up. You might not find connections right away, but you will find source material. You can start looking for connections later. Even a seemingly superficial connection between disparate ideas can provide an avenue to explore new meaning. A creative thinker might also look for the unexpected at a hardware store, the city dump, or a vacant lot.

Seeing Connections If you are open to ideas wherever they are found and can see connections, then moments of inspiration are possible. As an example, imagine this scenario: You just bought a house. The house is old, dating to the 1940s, and its architecture reflects a different time period. As you renovate the house, you find remnants of past owners, such as names on the wall and material that isn’t used in contemporary building. Parts of the floor plan strike you as odd. The kitchen is small and not open to the rest of the house.

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The house represents an object that you care about and are curious about. You are in the first step of creative thinking: being curious. In this step, you’ll write down everything that you notice and begin to list questions. Examples of relevant questions include: Why are there no closets? Why is there a door under the stairs? Why is the cellar so cold? Why are the doors and windows irregular in size? Then, you’ll take these questions a step further. You’ll start asking questions that will prompt you to explore connections. For instance, you might ask: Why was a certain material used? What were the local industries at the time? How did the material get there? Do the materials reflect the economic status of the people who live there? Once you have a list of questions and possible connections, you might do some research. Look up the deed to the house at the local historic society. Find the original map to the plot of land. Find out if this was a house that was premanufactured from a kit or built and designed by a local architect. You might also research the family that once lived there by visiting an archive or digital collection that has information on the lifestyle of 1940s families. This may lead you to thinking about the big picture: how the economy or domestic life has changed since the 1940s. A simple factor like the size of a refrigerator or the location of a bread box could give you a better understanding of how the house was designed and intended to function. From asking questions, making connections, and doing a bit of research, you may find an artistic question to pursue. For instance, you might choose to deconstruct a wall to open the kitchen space, reflecting a more communal style of living. You might include a sign from the brick manufacturer in your décor.

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Creative ideas such as these function as a list of options that one might pursue. Being curious, exploring connections, researching, and seeing the big picture are all starting points for creating and acting on new ideas.

Rebecca Rutstein The painter Rebecca Rutstein has eagerly embraced new opportunities throughout her career. For instance, she has taken her studio practice underwater. She joined up with a science team from the University of Georgia and descended to a depth of 2,200 meters on a submersible. While there, she set up a small studio space and documented her experience.

Intellectual Journeys Another way you can become an explorer is to take an intellectual journey rather than a physical one. For instance, a designer working on a project with many stakeholders might begin by meeting with the stakeholders and listening to their ideas and vision. She starts to write concepts that she hears and then presents those concepts back to the stakeholders. From there, they make a list of words that each person associates with the concept. They see where some of their ideas overlap, and they make another list of words with nouns and adjectives that they associate with the ideas. Starting with a simple set of ideas and radiating outward by associating words can lead to a fruitful intellectual journey. Through this process, the designer is able to go back to the drawing board and begin to visualize a product for this unique group.

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A Model Process This lesson concludes with a model process that you can modify into something that works for you. Here are the steps of the process: Choose a regular day where you can focus for an extended period on the intention of thinking artistically. Perhaps it will be several days a week, once a week, or once a month. Regardless of the frequency, intention and regularity are key. Identify an artistic goal. For instance, imagine that you want to learn a new artistic skill such as watercolor. By choosing a medium, buying the supplies, and choosing a subject matter, you have positioned yourself to learn a new creative process. Allow yourself time to play, time to fail, time to research, and time to just look at what you made. Playing means you have to have some space and the right material with plenty of it. You also need to stay in the artistic zone. Don’t move into a zone of judgment. Don’t worry about whether what you are making is ultimately going to work out. Simply make a bunch of it, and then step back and assess. Remember that failing is important. Finally, when you find that you like a certain method of creating, start doing some research. There is virtually unlimited information available for you to learn new skills and techniques.

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Exercises 1. Practice making creative connections by choosing books from two different sections of the bookstore or library, one in a subject that you know and one in a subject that is unfamiliar. Read both. See where you can make creative connections between the two. 2. Use your next design decision as an opportunity to explore and make connections. Whether you’re buying a sweater, painting a room, or making pottery, slow down and ask questions before you make your choices. In the case of painting the room, perhaps you want to research the history of the house before choosing your paint. In the case of the sweater, you could trace the cultural roots of the sweater’s weave or material. As for pottery, you could explore vase shapes in different periods and cultures before making yours.

Suggested Reading Stewart, Launching the Imagination. Tim’s Vermeer (documentary).

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LESSON 23 The Visual Life:

Collecting Collecting is an essential skill and process for all artists and designers. In fact, collecting is part of how you can grow your knowledge and expand your visual literacy. This lesson looks at reasons people collect items and how you can effectively go about the task of collecting.

Reasons People Collect Humans have a natural instinct to collect, but there are a myriad of other reasons someone might start a collection. One reason is happiness; for instance, someone who likes owls might begin a collection of owl paraphernalia. Starting a collection could also bring someone knowledge and intellectual satisfaction. For instance, someone interested in fashion might start collecting dresses from different periods in history. The interest might also be academic, as in the case of an entomologist collecting bugs for information. Some people like the thrill of the hunt when looking for an object. For instance, someone who likes rare books might find joy in the search for a specific rare book. Once they establish what they are collecting, most people establish some basic rules that serve as parameters for their search. It can be a truly enjoyable challenge to work within those parameters. Others collect as a form of self-expression or portraiture. For example, take collections of books, music, cars, and art. Such collections express who the owners are as individuals.

Beginning to Collect A great way to begin collecting is to look around your house, your things, and your habits. For instance, you might ask yourself questions such as: What types of objects do you already collect? Are you an avid reader? Do you pick things up while walking or hiking? If you find that you have more than one of something that you don’t use practically, then you may have the start to a collection.

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Identify something to collect, and then do visual research either in person or online. There are many resources on digital collections, but you can also perform research by going to stores that might contain the type of thing you are looking for. You might also go to the library and check out some books related to the objects that interest you.

The Mercer Museum The Mercer Museum in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is a  specif ic notable collection. The historian and archaeologist Henry Mercer built this concrete castle in 1916, and it houses over 30,000 handmade American objects. Mercer put enormous time and resources into building the museum so that others could experience the collection.

Another helpful activity is exploring other collections. For instance, if you want to start collecting cameras from different time periods, you could visit a museum that specializes in the collection of cameras.

Curating a Collection Learning how to curate is an important aspect of collecting. For instance, museums are carefully designed to guide the viewer through the experience of the collection in a particular way, asking them to make connections and draw conclusions simply through the way items are displayed. Understanding how collections are selected and displayed is an important visual literacy skill. For every item you see, there are many items you don’t see, and there are reasons for that. The placement and order of the items you see communicate something to you, even if you aren’t paying attention. However, the more attention you do pay, the more skillful and intelligent a visual consumer you will be.

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The best way to learn this is to try it out. The following steps can give you practice curating: Inventory your entire collection. Place it all out on a table. Start trying to categorize what you see. Decide on a basic set of criteria for choosing a group of objects. For instance, perhaps you want all of your objects to be a specific color, or perhaps you want your objects to reflect a monetary or emotional value. Find a display space. This could be a cigar box, a bookshelf, a shadow box, a gallery, or a temporary pop-up exhibition for an event. Organize your display space, clearly communicating your established criteria.

Collections as Inspiration Collections can be an endless source of inspiration. If you have a collection, try using it as source material for your next visual art project. Here are some ideas: If your collection is huge and has little monetary value, consider using the actual objects in an assemblage. However, be careful with this. Consider the object’s utilitarian, historical, or emotional value before you use it for another purpose. You wouldn’t want to do something irreversible that you might later regret. Draw or paint objects in your collection. Can you convey your attachment to the object in the drawing or painting? Photograph the objects and digitally create a display room for your objects.

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Collecting Art This lesson concludes with some tips that will be helpful if you wish to begin collecting art. Keep in mind that collecting art is like building any other type of collection. Although most people think of wealthy individuals, corporations, or religious or government institutions as collectors, anyone can be an art collector. To begin your collection, establish a reason you want to buy the art. It could be as simple as liking what you see. It may be that you start because you have a blank wall or empty corner in your home. Once you begin, establish some basic criteria. For instance, you might decide to purchase work from a particular group of artists. Additionally, do some research. Get to know the artists you are supporting. Go to their studio or read up on them at the library. If you can’t find any book about the artist, find out if they have a website or a gallery. Next, curate your collection. You do not have to display all of it at once, which means wall or floor space is less of a concern. Remember to take care of your collection. Research how to properly care for what you purchase. For instance, if you are collecting items made from paper, make sure you store them in a climate-controlled space, away from insects and dust. Investing in archival covers or covering the surface of a paper piece with glassine is a good start. If you are collecting pottery, make sure you know how to wash it. If you are collecting jewelry, make sure you know how to clean it. Sunlight and moisture can be the enemy of many works of art, so make sure you have a space that works for your pieces. Let your collection inspire you; for instance, some designers find inspiration from paintings. And remember to have fun. This is your chance to use all of your visual literacy skills and take some chances.

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Remember that art does not have to cost millions of dollars. You can start your collection on a much smaller budget. Regardless of the collection that you have or would like to start, use it as an opportunity to get to know yourself and your values. Self-expression, inspiration, remembrance, love, curiosity, and hope are all reasons why people collect—and they are all good reasons to indulge yourself.

Exercises 1. Start a collection. You can choose any parameter you’d like. For instance, your love of a particular animal, particular color, historical period, or baseball team can be the potential beginning of a collection. 2. After you’ve established a collection, or if you already have one, consider how you’d like to curate and display your collection. If the items don’t have much value, you might create an assemblage or other work of art. You could create a wonder room or cabinet of curiosity to house your display. Alternatively, perhaps you’d like it to be hidden. Think about where and why. All of these are opportunities for creative choices and visual engagement. 3. Host a pop-up event in your home or a local venue for your creative work, your collection, or someone else’s. A pop-up event can be one hour or one day. It can be in your home or even online.

Suggested Reading Art Is the Highest Form of Hope and Other Quotes by Artists. Herb and Dorothy (documentary).

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LESSON 24 The Visual Life:

Becoming a Maker A common belief is that artists and designers are just born to do what they do. That is not entirely wrong: They are born to do what they do—to create. But that doesn’t make them special. Everyone is born to create. People design, manipulate, arrange, rearrange, decorate, experiment with, and construct their surroundings in countless ways every day. The trait that sets makers apart is that they do this consciously, with intention and passion. They are special not because they are born to do it. Rather, they are special because they choose to do it. You can, too. This lesson looks at ways you can begin to live the life of a maker.

Identifying Your Reason Identifying why you want to make something might help you determine what you make. For instance, a person who has a high-pressure career that does not allow for spontaneity may want to choose a medium where they can come and go as they please rather than a medium that controls their time and even creative method. A camera may be a great place to start if traveling is one of your passions rather than investing in all of the tools and supplies of oil painting. Someone who works with technology and has a desk job may be interested in working directly from nature or throwing a pot on a wheel rather than developing an image digitally.

Classes To become a maker, a helpful first step might be to take a class. Find a community art center, college, or university and check out the courses that they offer. For instance, many community art centers offer short, one-session workshops that might jumpstart your artistic pursuits.

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Tips for Getting Started Next, this lesson turns to some practical tips for pursuing a creative goal. The first is to set a goal and determine a span of time to chase it. It is important to set a goal and commit to a length of time that you are pursuing this goal. For instance, you may want to join a painting class once a week and work on three paintings over the course of the fall. Once you have determined what you want to make, the next step is to formalize your artistic intention by establishing a workspace. This might be an area of your home. Alternatively, many community art centers offer studio space for rent, and artists often open up their own spaces to others. By finding and dedicating a space to your creative work, you are signaling to yourself and to others that you are invested in this process. You will also need to purchase material. Start small. Read some reviews, follow some artist blogs, and look at art and design periodicals to see what products might work. You can also go to an art supply store and ask the staff. There are also many resources from companies themselves. Always remember to be safe. Setting up a studio space requires that you are aware of the toxicity of the material you are using, that you keep yourself and others safe, and that you have adequate ventilation and adhere to all safety standards.

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After You Get Started Once you have identified a goal, found a space, and purchased material, you are well on your way to making creative works. At this point, it is important to put your pursuits in perspective and in context with the larger world. As an example, if you want to make stained glass, it is important to look at stained glass from other cultures and other time periods. It is important to research basic stained glass methods and production techniques so that you can learn different ways of approaching the medium. Another important step—and a good way to jumpstart your work—is to identify a theme or subject matter. For instance, imagine you want to document your travels through painting. You have taken photographs from all over the world, and you want to translate those photographs into paint. Start by identifying themes in the photographs. For instance, is there a landscape theme? Do you like taking pictures of doors? Does wildlife figure prominently in your photos? Figure out a theme and go from there. Perhaps your interest is more specific. In this case, you might identify key subject matter. For instance, perhaps your work is less about wildlife in general and more about lions in particular. This is a great way to start any art project. Another way to set up a project is to work sequentially. If you are taking photographs, think about making multiple versions of the same thing. Set up parameters. For instance, you might determine a standard size and make 100 images in that size. Through restricting choices and trying something multiple times, artists are able to experiment through repetition.

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After Your First Attempt(s) Rarely is the first attempt at anything a success. Success in making art hinges on the ability of the maker to see versions of their idea in multiple forms. By making something over and over again, you can work your vision out. The faster you move through ideas and crank up the productivity, the more successful you will be. Once you have made something, it is important to step back and look at it with a critical eye. Ask yourself: Are there areas that are redundant? Is there anything that should be added? Could you organize it a different way? Time can be helpful here. Allow yourself to get some distance from your creation. Give it an hour, day, or week before you come back to it. Look at it at different times of day. Also try looking at it in different media. Many artists take photos of their works in progress to see the works in a new way. If there is something about your work that is not matching your initial vision, this is an opportunity to address that. However, it is also an opportunity to see what the process of making has potentially added to your initial vision. If something differs from what you were attempting, ask yourself: Is there something about that difference that you can explore or leverage? The act of making is not just about translating thought into form. It’s also a way of thinking in itself.

Suggested Reading Kleon, Steal Like an Artist. Kudielka, ed., The Eye’s Mind.

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Exercises 1. If you’re considering becoming a maker, find a space and time that can be devoted to it. It doesn’t have to be much, but it does have to be regular. 2. Bring your new visual literacy skills to everything you see. Assess your visual choices and begin to make them consciously. Most of all, enjoy the constant inspiration, joy, and beauty that an informed perspective of the visual world can provide. 3. Share your work with others. There are many ways to reach out and become part of an artistic community, and art objects become real when they are shared and enjoyed by others.

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Bibliography Agrawal, Roma. Built. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2018. This is a look at what it actually takes to build things, expertly written by a female engineer. Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color, 50th anniversary ed. Yale University Press, 2013. A complete and classic manual for understanding the three dimensions of color. Arnheim, Rudolf. The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1988. This book takes the advanced reader on a journey through an in-depth look at how centers determine meaning. ———. Art and Visual Perception. A Psychology of the Creative Eye. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. This is a must-have book for anyone interested in the psychology of perception. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2014. Bang, Molly. Picture This: How Pictures Work, 5th ed. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2016. This book, first published in 1991, is a classic in the canons of visual literacy. Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. Chicago, IL: Chicago Press, 2000. This book takes a philosophical look at the fear of color and its impact on society. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Bungay, Suffolk: Richard Clay Ltd., 1972. This is a seminal book on how our worldview was altered with the mass marketing of photographs, televisions, and the ability to reproduce images. Champion, Matthew. Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England’s Churches. London: Ebury Press, 2017. This is a book that shines a light on the carvings, scratchings, and images of medieval times. Danto, Arthur. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. This is an advanced philosophical book of essays that grapple with the question: What is a work of art?

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De Botton, Alaine. The Architecture of Happiness. New York, NY: Pantheon Press, 2006. This book sheds light on architecture and how it impacts our well-being and humanity. ———. Art as Therapy. New York, NY: Phaidon Press, 2013. The author takes a look at art by challenging the reader to see art through seven functions: remembering, hope, sorrow, rebalancing, self understanding, growth, and appreciation. He also proposes a way to think about good art. DK, publisher. Encyclopedia of Landscape Design: Planning, Building, and Planting your Perfect Outdoor Space. New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2017. This book breaks down the formal elements of any outdoor living space into directives that are easy to follow and learn. Dondis, A. Donis. A Primer of Visual Literacy. Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 1973. This book is an underrecognized classic in the canon of visual literacy and visual communication. Ehresmann, Julia. The Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms, 2nd ed. New York, NY: New York Graphic Society. This is a small book that defines art terms. Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Co., 2008. This is a manual for how to tell a story using pictures. Elkins, James. The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Elkins is an art historian who has a way of connecting images and our experiences of them to our perceptions of a larger world. ———. Visual Literacy. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Group, 2008. This book takes an in-depth look at what visual literacy means and how it functions in art. Fig, Joe. Inside the Painter’s Studio. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. This book documents the creative process of 24 contemporary painters and their studio spaces. Finlay, Victoria. Color: A Natural History of the Palette. Random House. New York, NY: Random House, 2004. This is a book about the history of pigments.

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Flam, Jack. Matisse on Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. This book is a collection of letters, interviews, and other writings by Henri Matisse. Getlien, Mark. Living with Art. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2015. This is a college-level introductory textbook to art appreciation. Harmon, Katherine. You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. Princeton Architectural Press, 2003. This book links our experiences of space with our bodies and memory. Higgins, Kathleen. Aesthetics in Perspective. 1996. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1996. This is a textbook that compiles philosophical writings on art. Itten, Johannes. The Elements of Color: A Treatise on the Color System. Ravensburg, Germany: John Wiley and Sons, 1970. This is a seminal work on color theory with an introduction by Faber Birren. Jillette, Penn, and Farley Ziegler, producers. Tim’s Vermeer. Sony Pictures Classics, 2013. An entertaining and fascinating look into one man’s attempt to reconstruct the source material for a Vermeer painting. Kleon, Austin. Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things That Nobody Told You about Being Creative. New York, NY: Workman Publishing, 2012. An entertaining book that gives you straightforward pointers. Leborg, Christian. Visual Grammar. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. A direct text addressing the basics of visual language. Leslie, Clare Walker. Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2003. This is a fantastic practical guide to keeping a nature journal. Lippard, Lucy. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York, NY: New Press, 1998. This is a book that combines history, geography, and art. Liungman, Carl. Dictionary of Symbols. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995.

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Livingston, Margaret. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 2002. This book provides the reader with the opportunity to understand visual science alongside art objects. Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010. This book is a manual for anyone interested in the shape, form, and meaning behind text. Mayer, Ralph. The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques, 5th ed. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1991. This is a technical manual covering materials and techniques for drawing and painting media. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993. This is an essential guide for any artist or educator who wants to understand pictures in two dimensions. McPhee, John. A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton. New York, NY: Farrer, Straux, and Giroux, 1999. A biography about basketball player and politician Bill Bradley. McQuade, Donald, and Christine McQuade. Seeing and Writing 4. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. This is a book for teachers that presents a series of images and exercises focusing on written visual analysis. Norman, Don. The Design of Everyday Things. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2013. O’Donnell, Timothy. Sketchbook: Conceptual Drawings from the World’s Most Influential Designers. Rockport Publishers. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2009. This is a fantastic picture book that documents the sketch pages of prolific designers. Ocvirk, Otto, Robert Stinson, Philip Wigg, Robert Bone, and David Cayton. Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice, 12th ed. McGraw Hill. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2013. This book is perfect for art educators and artists who want to understand how to communicate with the average person about art. Phaidon Editors. Art Is the Highest Form of Hope and Other Quotes by Artists. New York, NY: Phaidon Press, 2016. This inspirational book includes quotes from artists of a wide range of time periods.

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Visual Literacy Skills: How to See

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Visual Literacy Skills: How to See