The Dark Tower: Visual Elements
This month I’m taking Digital Illustration. I’m both excited and intimidated. I can’t wait to see what kinds of things I’ll get to create, but I’m not looking forward to finding out how much stress I’ll be under. We’ll be working with Adobe Illustrator some more, and while I understand it’s usefulness and can manage my way around, I don’t know if I’ve warmed up to it yet. I won’t give up on it though.
For the next few weeks I’m supposed to blog about the visual elements used in artwork by an artist of my choice. While we’re going to be using Illustrator, this class is focusing more on art and design from a composition standpoint. And true to Bridgetarian format I picked John Howe, who, if you don’t know, is famous for his Lord of the Rings artwork and did conceptual art for the film trilogy.
The visual elements of art are: line, shape, value, color, texture, space, and time and motion.
The piece I’m going to talk about today is called The Dark Tower.
Line: The lines of Barad-Dur draw the eye right along the length of the painting, which reinforces the edges. But it also seems to be leaning slightly to the left which gives it the feeling of the corrupt, wickedness of Sauron.
Shape: The curvy neck shape of the fell beast is just fun and unique, and the idea of the shape continues out to his tongue as well.
Value: The skyline in the background is so much lighter than the clouds above it, showing how much closer they are to the foreground. They’re really hovering right over the tower and the Nazgul.
Color: There isn’t a lot of variation of color in this piece. Aside from the purple clouds in the background everything is in muted tones of gray and black that give it a gloomy, sinister feeling.
Texture: You can see the leathery quality of the fell beasts wings, and the way the smooth scales on his back reflect the light.
Space: The tiny details of windows in the tower tell you that the Nazgul is some distance away, but it also tells you about the scale of the tower that you can’t see all of it in the frame despite the distance.
Time and motion: The way the Nazgul on the fell beast is posed shows that they probably only just landed seconds before, or are preparing to fly off.
And I guess that pretty much covers it.
For the next few weeks I’m supposed to blog about the visual elements used in artwork by an artist of my choice. While we’re going to be using Illustrator, this class is focusing more on art and design from a composition standpoint. And true to Bridgetarian format I picked John Howe, who, if you don’t know, is famous for his Lord of the Rings artwork and did conceptual art for the film trilogy.
The visual elements of art are: line, shape, value, color, texture, space, and time and motion.
The piece I’m going to talk about today is called The Dark Tower.
Line: The lines of Barad-Dur draw the eye right along the length of the painting, which reinforces the edges. But it also seems to be leaning slightly to the left which gives it the feeling of the corrupt, wickedness of Sauron.
Shape: The curvy neck shape of the fell beast is just fun and unique, and the idea of the shape continues out to his tongue as well.
Value: The skyline in the background is so much lighter than the clouds above it, showing how much closer they are to the foreground. They’re really hovering right over the tower and the Nazgul.
Color: There isn’t a lot of variation of color in this piece. Aside from the purple clouds in the background everything is in muted tones of gray and black that give it a gloomy, sinister feeling.
Texture: You can see the leathery quality of the fell beasts wings, and the way the smooth scales on his back reflect the light.
Space: The tiny details of windows in the tower tell you that the Nazgul is some distance away, but it also tells you about the scale of the tower that you can’t see all of it in the frame despite the distance.
Time and motion: The way the Nazgul on the fell beast is posed shows that they probably only just landed seconds before, or are preparing to fly off.
And I guess that pretty much covers it.
"It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish" J.R.R. Tolkien
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