LEARNING OBJECTIVES
■ How to create a threedimensional effect in your drawings and paintings
■ Exercises in creating shape, values, form and space
Following last month’s article about sketching and painting techniques, this month I would like to write about form and how it’s an important element for an artist. A strong understanding of form and how to create the illusion of form in drawings and paintings is one of the first things you should acquaint yourself with as an artist. Line is also one of the most important elements of art. Imagine creating a painting without drawing lines to divide the paper into shapes and forms.
What is form?
A form has the illusion of being a two or three-dimensional shape. Two-dimensional form has length, width and height, such as a drawing or painting, and the three-dimensional form has depth as well as width and height of an object, such as a sculpture or building. In fact, everything you see in life is three-dimensional. Form and shape can be described as either organic or geometric.
Organic (natural) forms usually have an irregular outline and are often associated with naturally occurring forms; they are free flowing in appearance, sometimes asymmetrical. They visually suggest the natural world: a leaf, trees, flowers, plants, animals, sky and sea.
Geometric forms are regular shapes such as squares, rectangles, circles, cubes, spheres or cones. For example, architecture or sculptures are usually composed of geometric forms. Try to recognise every day objects and environments that we refer to as being realistic or naturalistic, however, if the images are difficult to identify in terms of our daily visual experience, we may refer to the images as abstract.
Here are the seven elements in art:
• Form is three-dimensional with height, width and depth