Design Principles Overview

When making art, we use a variety of tools to create a visual story. Let’s call these tools “nouns.”

These nouns are the Design Elements we learned about in the last several weeks. They include Line, Shape, Form, Value, Color, Edges, Texture, Size and Direction.

Our awareness of and our expert use of these Design Elements are what make our paintings successful. We can see, as we develop our critical eye, that paintings that don’t use these Elements effectively are less successful.

Where Design Elements act as the “nouns,” Design Principles are the “adjectives.” Or to blatantly mix my analogies, let’s take music as an example; our Design Elements act as the instruments being played, and the Design Principles are the various ways and qualities in how these instruments are played. When we ask why one painting works well and why another painting does not work as well, 95 percent of the time the answer will lead us to how effectively we used or didn’t use our Design Elements and Principles.

Design Principles Overview

Boundaries

Movement, Rhythm & Rest

Contrast

Harmony

Patterns

Emphasis and Dominance

Perspective

Proportion and Scale

Balance

Variety

Unity

Repetition

Over the next several weeks, we’ll explore each of these Design Principles and see examples of them in action. Here’s an overview.

Boundaries

Edges of your canvas are the four most important lines you’ll be using
Also consider Line and Direction

Movement, Rhythm, and Rest

Like the design element Line, we’ll look at the principles of good Movement, Rhythm and Rest
Also consider Line, Direction