The Visual Element of Light
Man will begin to recover the moment he takes art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money. ~Ernst Levy
Value / Light, gradation of light to dark across a form. Chiaroscuro, a primary tool of the Renaissance.
Value / Light, gradation of light to dark across a form. Chiaroscuro, a primary tool of the Renaissance.
Light is another element that artists use in their work as they seek to convey their message. Have you ever noticed how colors look different when the sun is bright or behind clouds, or if various lights in a room are on or off. This is the Light Source- light sources can be artificial, like a light bulb, or natural, like the sun. Most works of art choose to have one source of light to simplify and unify a composition.
Nancy Holt explored the use of natural sunlight to create environmental artwork, "Sun Tunnels". Going to Utah to see first hand how sun light affects the value and chiaroscuro of the work may not be a possibility, so show as many images as possible that depict the natural lighting and the perspective of the piece.
Light, color, and value are intimately connected. Sculpture and architecture become more dynamic with the use of intentional lighting effects. Actual light is also used in digital & electronic art.
A silhouette is the result of the light source coming from behind the subject. Surrealist artists, such as Yves Tanguy, Indefinite Divisibility, would often use strong light from the front or side, which created deep shadows.
Some artists made visible in the composition the source of light, such as the single candle in Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes that provided strong contrasts of light and dark.
Chiaroscuro: Means light/dark (contrasts of light and shadow)-chiaroscuro, the use of lights and darks, is often used in Western art to model figures by using light value tones where the light source is closest to the object and darker values where the light source if furthest away. Instead of modeling figures, Japanese print artists used solid, flat areas of color and isometric projection, leaving the lines in geometric objects parallel.