Visual Arts

Careers in Visual Arts

What is a Career? An occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life with
opportunities for progress.
What is Visual Arts? A creative art whose products are to be appreciated by sight (e.g.,
painting, sculpture, film-making).
Job vs. Career: A job is primarily for earning a paycheck, whereas a career involves
advancement in pay or responsibility through experience and training.
Career Options:
Art Teacher
Architect
Archivist
Art Consultant
Art Editor
Art Gallery Director
Artist
Cartoonist
Cinematographer
Courtroom Sketch Artist
Critic
Curator
Engraver
Exhibit Designer
Fashion Designer
Furniture Designer
Gallery Director
Graphic Designer
Historian
Illustrator
Interior Decorator
Jewellery Designer
Journalist
Landscape Designer
Medical Illustrator
Multimedia Consultant
Museum Director
Non-profit Administrator
Painter
Performer
Photographer
Product Designer
Sculptor
Set Designer
Special Effects Consultant
Tattoo Artist

Package Design
 What is Package Design? The process of creating a functional and aesthetically pleasing
wrapper for a product, involving problem-solving. It connects form, structure, materials, color,
imagery, typography, and regulatory information.
Roots of Packaging Design: Packaging design evolved with the rise in global commercial
activity, particularly during the industrial revolution in the late 18th century. Mechanization
accelerated production, increasing the need for both functional and attractive packaging.
Reasons for Packaging Design:
Maintain product quality.
Ensure customer access and safe usage.
Minimize quality problems through good design.
Attract consumer attention and encourage purchase.
Contain, protect, and preserve the product.
Deliver the product safely and conveniently to the end-user.
Primary Objective: To contain, protect, transport, dispense, store, identify, and distinguish a
product in the marketplace. To meet marketing objectives by communicating a product's
personality or function and generating a sale.
Types of Packaging Design:
Consumer Packaging: Focuses on consumer convenience, appeal, and marketing.
Industrial Packaging: Focuses on handling convenience and protection during
transportation and logistics.
Good Packaging Design:

1. Effective Product Name

2. Proper Colors
3. Conveys Important Information
4. Builds Brand Identification
5. Clarity of Presentation

Creating Proper Packaging Design:

Research: Examine successful packaging designs of similar products.
Testing: Conduct tests with the target audience.
Adjustments: Monitor sales and make necessary changes to the packaging.
Classification of Packaging:
Primary: Direct contact with the product; maintains product quality.
Secondary: Contains the product and primary pack; focuses on presentation and
protection.
Tertiary: Used for transport, shipping, warehouse storage, and bulk handling.
Primary Function:
Presentation: Attractive and eye-catching.
Protection: Increases the life cycle of the product.
Preservation: Preserves original colors, quality, flavor, etc.
Economical: Cost-effective.
Convenience: Light and easy to handle.
Secondary Function:
Containment: Premeasured and pre-weighted.
Identification: Easily identifiable products.
Labeling: Promotes the sale of goods.
Handling: Easy handling of cargo.
Suitability: Matches the product.
Design: The idea used to create a solution to a problem.
 Role of Design: A purposeful, conscious effort to establish order from chaos.

Still Life Drawing

Still Life Definition: A drawing or painting of inanimate objects (e.g., fruit, pottery, flowers).
Purpose: Allows artists to arrange objects and practice observational drawing techniques.
Tips for Setting Up:

1. Choose the location to maximize the light source.

2. Use architectural features.
3. Carefully select objects that demonstrate value and composition.
4. Arrange objects to avoid bland central positioning and symmetry.

Starting a Still Life:

Plan the arrangement of objects.
Consider the overall shape of the objects.
Create a Value Scale.
Drawing Techniques:
Parallel Lines: Draw as straight as possible.
Stippling (dots): Closer dots create darker values, farther dots create lighter values.
Crosshatching: Intersecting parallel or contour lines.
Measuring Techniques:
Measuring with a Pencil: Use the pencil to measure the width and height of the subject,
then transfer those measurements to paper.
Measuring with a Grid: Create a grid to maintain proportions.
Measuring with Basic Shapes: Break down complex forms into simple shapes like ovals,
circles, rectangles, and triangles.
Measuring with Axes: Use axes to define the proportions and relationships of different
parts of the subject.
Tips for Working:

1. Position yourself to see both the subject and your drawing at the same time.
2. Plan the composition.
3. Sketch out the composition lightly.
4. Add value slowly, layering to build up deep tones, and define edges with shifts in value, not
lines.
5. Achieve a full range of value.

Sculpture
Sculpture Definition: A three-dimensional form constructed to represent a natural or
imaginary shape.
Materials: Hard materials like stone, metal, glass, or wood, or plastic materials like clay,
textiles, polymers, and softer metals. Can also include sound, text, and light.
Types of Sculpture:

1. Free Standing/Full Round: Occupies three-dimensional space and must be viewed from all
angles.
2. Relief: Grows out of a flat, two-dimensional background.
 High Relief
Bas Relief/Low Relief
Sunken Relief

1. Linear: Emphasizes construction with thin, tubular items such as wire or neon tubing.

Methods for Creating Sculpture:

1. Subtractive Method: Carving material away from the solid mass (e.g., stone, wood).
2. Additive Method: Manipulation/Modeling building up a form with a pliable material (e.g., wax,
clay, plaster).
3. Substitution/Casting: Creating a sculpture from a soft substance to be cast in a more durable
material (e.g., bronze).
4. Constructive Method: Fabrication attaching existing materials together (e.g., found objects,
assemblage).

Elements of Art and Design

Elements of Art: Components that can be isolated and defined in any visual design.

1. Line: A form with width and length, but no depth, used to create edges or outlines.

Vertical lines: Strong and powerful.

Horizontal lines: Peaceful and calm.
Diagonal lines: Movement and excitement.
Zigzag lines: Confusion or excitement.
Curved lines: Graceful movement.

1. Shape: A flat, two-dimensional area with height and width.

Geometric Shapes: Precise, mathematical shapes (e.g., circle, square, triangle).

Organic Shapes: Irregular and uneven shapes often found in nature.

1. Form: A three-dimensional object with height, width, and depth.

Geometric forms: sphere, cube, pyramid.

Organic forms: irregular and uneven edges with depth.

1. Space: The area in and around an object.

Positive space: Area occupied by an object.

Negative space: Area around the object that defines its edges.

1. Value: The lightness or darkness of a color, creating the illusion of form, depth, or distance.

Contrast: Difference between light and dark values.

Shading: Creates the illusion of depth and form.

1. Color: Has three properties: hue (name), value (lightness/darkness), and intensity (purity).
 Primary hues: yellow, red, and blue.
Secondary colors: made by mixing two primaries.
Intermediate colors: mixtures of a primary and adjacent secondary color.

1. Texture: The surface quality, both simulated and actual, of artwork.

Tactile texture: The tactile quality of a surface (e.g., rough, smooth).

Non-Tactile/Visual texture: The visual quality of a surface; an illusion of texture.
Natural texture: Textures found in nature.
Artificial texture: Textures from things made by humans.

Still Life Drawing - Additional Notes

Drawing: Representation of an object or idea using line in any suitable medium.

Weight: Darkness or lightness of the lines of a drawing.

Still life: Work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter.

Composition: Arrangement of objects in an artwork.

Shape: Formed when a line returns to its point of origin without crossing itself. An outline that
contains an area within it.
Flat Shapes (2D): Square, Rectangle, Circle and Triangle
Corresponding solid Forms (3D): Cube, Cuboid, Cylinder and Sphere and Triangular Prism
Principles of Constructing a Solid Form
Light Source
Highlight
Light
Midtone
Shadow
Cast Shadow
Reflection

Mixed-Media Art
Mixed Media: An artwork in which more than one medium has been employed.
Medium: Refers to the materials that are used to create a work of art.
Art Criticism
Art criticism: Responding to, interpreting meaning, and making critical judgments about
specific works of art.
Art Critique: An evaluation of a work of art.
Why critique?
Allows the artist to look at their work (or that of another artist) in an objective way.
Allows artist to "see" the work with fresh insight.
Allows artist to receive feedbacks from viewers.
Four Principles of Art Criticism:
Description: What do you see?
Analysis: How did the artist do it?
Interpretation: Why did the artist create it and what does it mean?
Judgement/Evaluation: Is the artwork good or not?
Things to Consider:
Elements of Art and Design (Description)
Principles of Art and Design (Analysis)
Meaning (Interpretation)
Evaluation (Backed up with an argument)

Cartoon Design
Graphic Design: The combination of lettering and illustration used to communicate a
message to others.
Lettering: The written alphabet in various styles (Fonts).
Illustration: The image used along with the lettering.
Types of Graphic Design:
Maps and Diagrams
Signs and Billboards
Labels and Packages
Advertisements and Posters
Newsletters and Brochures
Comic Book Strips
Characteristics of Graphic Designs:
Clear
Cost-Effective
Accessible
Relevant
Eye-Catching
Cartoon Definition: A simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously
exaggerated way.
Caricature Definition: A distorted presentation of a person, type, or action, exaggerating
salient features.
Purpose of Cartoon and Caricature: To satirize or ridicule a subject.
History of Cartoon: Began in prehistoric times with cave drawings. Evolved into pictorial
parody in the 1840s.
Main Types of Cartoons:
1. Editorial cartoons
2. Comic strips
3. Gag panels
4. Animated Cartoons

Difference between cartoon types:

Editorial cartoons: Single-panel drawings that portray the cartoonist's view of current
events.
Comic strips: Two or more panels that tell a joke or present an episode in a continuing
story.
Gag panels: A single drawing that tells a joke.
Animated cartoons: A series of drawings filmed and projected as motion pictures.