This site explores the elements of art and principles of design with videos, examples and lessons.

The elements and principles of design are the building blocks used to create a work of art.

Elements of Art are the visual "tools" that artists use to create an art work - they are what makes up an image or an art object: line, shape/form, value, color, space, and texture.

Principles of Design are the ways artists use the Elements of Art in an artwork - this is "what we do with the Elements" - how we arrange them, how we balance them, what is being emphasized, etc. The principles are: balance, contrast, repetition, emphasis, and unity.

Be sure to check out Art 2 - Lesson plans for intermediate Art program @ https://resourcebank.ca/courses/art-1-lesson-plans-for-beginner-art-program

Art 2 offers a two semester program:

Semester 1
Focus on drawing skills:
creative drawings, shading techniques review and practice, pen and graphite drawings, texture shading, colored pencils and oil pastels techniques, design stylizing techniques, non-traditional art media, mix-media, introduction to watercolor pencils, watercolor techniques, etc.

Semester 2
Focus on drawing, painting and printing media:
unusual painting media, creative designs - practice eye-hand coordination, pen and ink drawings, pattern values and creative application, introduction to silk screen printing, optical illusions and OpArt - review perspective, collages and acrylic paintings, composition and colors in Art.

Be sure to check out Art 1 - Lesson plans for intermediate Art program @ https://resourcebank.ca/courses/art-1-lesson-plans-for-beginner-art-program-2

Students will learn about the Impressionist painters' use of color and how it connected to early-19th-century scientific theories about color. They will explore combinations of primary and secondary colors, experiment creating secondary colors, and create a landscape using complementary colors.

Students create and decorate their own spectrographs using simple materials and holographic diffraction gratings. A holographic diffraction grating acts like a prism, showing the visual components of light. After building the spectrographs, students observe the spectra of different light sources as homework.

This is a whole language lesson for Speech Language Pathologists that incorporates food vocabulary, basic concepts of matching, color, and number, as well as the pragmatic skill of turn taking for language-delayed kindergarten students.

This demonstration shows that similar-appearing lights can be distinctly different, suggesting that the light emitted is generated in different ways. It requires some advance preparation/setup by the teacher and three recommended sources of orange light, that can be purchased at a hardware or department store. Includes extensions and additional background information on light generation in a section on underlying principles. This resource is from PUMAS - Practical Uses of Math and Science - a collection of brief examples created by scientists and engineers showing how math and science topics taught in K-12 classes have real world applications.

This handout outlines how the design elements of a poster, brochure, or advertisement help to set the mood and send a message. Design elements include: color, line, shape, type of lettering and use of space.

Students find and calculate the angle that light is transmitted through a holographic diffraction grating using trigonometry. After finding this angle, student teams design and build their own spectrographs, researching and designing a ground- or space-based mission using their creation. At project end, teams present their findings to the class, as if they were making an engineering conference presentation. Student must have completed the associated Building a Fancy Spectrograph activity before attempting this activity.

In this activity, students will test whether the color of a material affects how much heat it absorbs.

Students use simple materials to design an open spectrograph so they can calculate the angle light is bent when it passes through a holographic diffraction grating. A holographic diffraction grating acts like a prism, showing the visual components of light. After finding the desired angles, students use what they have learned to design their own spectrograph enclosure.

In a hands-on way, students explore light's properties of absorption, reflection, transmission and refraction through various experimental stations within the classroom. To understand absorption, reflection and transmission, they shine flashlights on a number of preselected objects. To understand refraction, students create indoor rainbows. An understanding of the fundamental properties of light is essential to designing an invisible laser security system.

Students are introduced to different ways of displaying visual spectra, including colored "barcode" spectra, like those produced by a diffraction grating, and line plots displaying intensity versus color, or wavelength. Students learn that a diffraction grating acts like a prism, bending light into its component colors.

Students' eyes are opened to the value of creative, expressive and succinct visual presentation of data, findings and concepts. Student pairs design, redesign and perform simple experiments to test the differences in thermal conductivity (heat flow) through different media (foil and thin steel). Then students create visual diagrams of their findings that can be understood by anyone with little background on the subject, applying their newly learned art vocabulary and concepts to clearly communicate their results. The principles of visual design include contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity; the elements of visual design include an awareness of the use of lines, color, texture, shape, size, value and space. If students already have data available from other experiments, have them jump right into the diagram creation and critique portions of the activity.

Use the sliders in the Rose-Colored Glasses SIM to play around with different colors for the light source, the car, and the glasses to answer these questions and learn more about the concept of light and color!

We have also created a short (2:44 min) tutorial video that goes into more detail on how to use this SIM for both you and your students.

Check out the entire collection of over 120 CK-12 Simulations at www.ck12.org/sims.

Students learn the basic properties of light the concepts of light absorption, transmission, reflection and refraction, as well as the behavior of light during interference. Lecture information briefly addresses the electromagnetic spectrum and then provides more in-depth information on visible light. With this knowledge, students better understand lasers and are better prepared to design a security system for the mummified troll.

Students learn about the basic properties of light and how light interacts with objects. They are introduced to the additive and subtractive color systems, and the phenomena of refraction. Students further explore the differences between the additive and subtractive color systems via predictions, observations and analysis during three demonstrations. These topics help students gain a better understanding of how light is connected to color, bringing them closer to answering an overarching engineering challenge question.

Positive and negative space can be tricky concepts to teach. The Japanese art of notan, some simple leaf shapes, and a quick intro to complementary colors is a fun way to explore the idea.

Students write Arduino code and use a “digital sandbox” to create new colors out of the three programming primary colors: green, red and blue. They develop their own functions, use them to make disco light shows, and vary the pattern and colors of their shows. The digital sandbox is a hardware and software learning platform powered by a microcontroller that can interact with real-world inputs like light, while at the same time controlling LEDs and other outputs.

Same or Different? is a routine that provides students opportunities to construct arguments when comparing objects, such as numbers or shapes.

A routine like Same or Different? provides accessible opportunities for even youngest students to learn how to talk about various features of mathematical objects – quantity, shape, color, orientation, and arrangement, to name a few.

Students use the spectrographs from the "Building a Fancy Spectrograph" activity to gather data about light sources. Using their data, they make comparisons between different light sources and make conjectures about the composition of a mystery light source.