Asymmetrical Balance

This piece by Childe Hassam shows asymmetrical balance. The dark buildings on the right balance out the light snow on the left. The top of the cars is the horizontal line that balances top and bottom. The height of each object in the painting balances out each side.  A line can be drawn next to the cars, separating each side, balancing one another.

Optical Painting

Optical painting or "Op Art" is the physical characteristics of certain formal elements-particularly line and color-are subtly manipulated to stimulate the nervous system into thinking it perceives movement.


In this piece, when one looks at it, it appears to be moving around, in and out. It can look like it is coming out at you or like it is going inward and continuing forever.

In this piece to the right by Bridget Riley, it appears as though the waves are moving. It looks like the waves are moving down and flowing cleanly.



Frottage

Frottage comes from the French word, frotter, which means to rub. In order to create frottage, one would take a sheet of paper and place it on a textured surface. Then, one would rub with a soft pencil to create the illusion of a wide variety of textures. The picture would look like it is full of texture, when in actuality, it is smooth. In this picture of trees and the woods, it looks like you could feel the texture of the trees and leaves and branches, but in reality, it is smooth like a normal drawing.




In this picture by Max Ernst, the inventor of frottage, the city looks almost three dimensional, like you can feel the deatils on the buildings and houses. It is a smooth picture with no true feeling.



Local Color

Local color is the color of objects viewed close up in even lighting conditions. Local color is a color we "know" an object to be. For example, a tree has brown bark and, depending on the time of year, the leaves are either green, yellow, orange, or red.




In this photo of candy, it shows the clor we would normally see the candy. Candy like this, gummy and covered in sugar, is usually bright fun colors, to try to attract people to eat it. This photo makes someone know what the candy looks like so they know what to look for if they would like to buy it.



Arbitrary Color

Artists
sometimes choose to paint things in colors that are not "true" to either their optical or local colors. This is arbitrary color. For example, an artist might paint a dog blue. Dogs are not blue, naturally, but an artist might depict a dog as blue. Like in this photo of an apple, the apple is purple. Apples are not purple unless painted or depicted as so in photos. This is an example of arbitrary color. In this painting by Pierre Bonnard, the mixture of colors of paint make the girl look like a different color than normal. er face is more of a purple-red color, while the dog is an orange color, and the grass is yellow. The grass color could be up for debate, as it could just be yellow leaves, but it is open for debate.

Hatching

 

Hatching is an area of closely spaced parallel lines, or hatches. Hatching looks like pancil drawings of lines to show color and shading. In the above picture, by Mary Casssett, it is a woman with a child on her lap, and a viewer can clearly see the shading and pencil lines
in the piece. In the picture to the right, it is a house with many
workers around. It looks like a late 1800 to early 1900 piece.
It is obviously drawn with pencil and the lines thoughout show
shading and depict color as light and dark. The closer the lines, the darker the object in this type of artwork.