LINE

Look at these two famous paintings. Which one looks peaceful and serene? Which one looks unhappy? Most people would agree that the Weeping Woman by Picasso looks pretty stressed out! She is holding her hands up to her face, gritting her teeth, and if you look closely enough you can even see a tear! Picasso used a specific type of line to break up her face, showing intense emotion: ZIG-ZAG LINES. He is using line as a symbol to show how broken this woman feels. 

In contrast, the painting Harmony In Red shows curving, organic, peaceful lines all over the place! Look at the wallpaper, the table cloth, the plants and trees through the window, and the woman herself. Matisse loved life, and he wanted people to experience that same "joie de vivre" when they looked at his artwork!

Here are some of the ways artists can use line to symbolize emotion in art...

• vertical - strength and stability (if you stand up straight and tall, your body feels stronger!)

• horizontal - very restful and stable but without energy (our bodies are horizontal when we are at rest or sleeping)

• diagonal - instability and full of potential energy

• zig-zag - power, danger, anger (zig-zag lines remind us of lightning)

• curving - joy, peace, calm (curving lines remind us of the wind through trees, ocean waves, and nature)

This painting from the Birmingham Museum of Art has a lot of horizontal lines in it, creating a feeling of rest:

Sunset, Haywagon in the Distance, by Martin Johnson Heade, 1875

Artists can also change the look of lines to make them choppy, smooth, rough, thick, thin, bold, smooth, etc. This is called: 

LINE QUALITY

Here is a drawing by Japanese artist Hokusai that shows a variety of thick and thin lines. He was an expert in changing line quality! 

This is a classroom example by Mrs. Nichols that shows line type, line quality, and an experiment in line.

This 6th grade artist is using lots of vertical and horizontal lines through her design to show strength and stability: 

This 6th grader is showing joyful, curving lines throughout his drawing to help him communicate his word idea: 

The most basic of all the Elements of Art is a line, "the path of a dot (or a moving point) through space."