The Elements of Art are the basic building blocks artists use to create art. They are line, shape, color, value, form, texture, and space.
Teaching the Elements of Art to young students gives them tools to create art and provides them with the vocabulary they need to talk about art. Incorporating Elements of Art into art lessons and hands-on art projects throughout the school year supports students’ understanding of how real artists use these tools in their art and encourages them to experiment with them using different techniques and materials.
Although objectives for the Elements of Art aren’t specifically stated in the National CORE Art Standards, I make sure to include them in my art lesson objectives. Students start with a basic introduction and develop a deeper, more complex understanding as they advance through their elementary school years and grow as young artists.
The Elements of Art for Kids
What is a line?
A line is a continuous mark made on a surface by a moving point. Lines can vary in width (from thick to thin), direction (such as vertical, horizontal, or diagonal), and length. Artists use a variety of lines, like straight, curved, wavy, and zig-zag.
Objectives for Lower Elementary
Students can:
Identify and name basic types of lines such as straight, curved, wavy, zigzag, and spiral.
Trace, draw and cut various types of lines.
Use body movements to follow lines drawn with chalk on the ground.
Create simple patterns and textures by repeating lines.
Explore the expressive potential of lines while listening to music.
Objectives for Upper Elementary
Students can:
Draw lines with varying quality, such as thick, thin, dashed, dotted, and varied (lines that change in width along their length).
Utilize lines to illustrate textures and add details in artworks.
Explore dynamic lines to convey movement and express emotions.
What is a shape?
A shape is a defined area enclosed by lines, creating a flat, two-dimensional figure. Shapes can be categorized into two types: geometric (such as squares, circles, triangles, rectangles) and organic (which are free-flowing, irregular, and often resemble objects found in nature).
Objectives for Lower Elementary
Students can:
Trace, draw, and cut out basic geometric shapes of different sizes and color.
Use basic geometric shapes to draw familiar objects like animals, houses, and people, and organic shapes for natural objects.
Create abstract collages or large murals by cutting out, arranging, layering, and gluing shapes together.
Explore shapes with a variety of art materials including stamps, plasticine, and simple digital drawing tools.
Repeat shapes to create patterns.
Fold and cut symmetrical shapes.
Objectives for Upper Elementary
Students can:
Identify, classify, and draw more complex shapes (like quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons) using a grid.
Use a compass to draw circles.
Create complex patterns using shapes, incorporating concepts like repetition, symmetry, and balance.
Repeat shapes to create texture in drawings and impressions in clay.
Design tessellations, which are patterns made of repeating shapes that fit perfectly together without any gaps.
Explore transformations such as rotation, reflection, translation, and resizing of shapes in art.
What is color?
Color refers to the specific hues seen in a medium, resulting from light reflecting off of it.
Objectives for Lower Elementary Students can:
Identify, name, and color primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and secondary colors (orange, green, purple).
Mix colors using different art materials (like crayons, colored pencils, plasticine, paint, etc.).
Put colors in “rainbow” order on a color wheel.
Distinguish between the expressive qualities of warm and cool colors.
Make connections between colors and feelings.
Objectives for Upper Elementary
Students can:
Create a color wheel to use as a visual tool to understand color relationships.
Mix tertiary colors (like yellow-green and red-purple) and add them to the color wheel.
Incorporate simple color schemes like complementary (two colors opposite each other on the color wheel) and analogous (colors next to each other on the color wheel) into their artwork.
Use color to express emotions and set the mood in a composition.
What is value?
Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. It indicates the amount of light a color reflects, creating depth, contrast, and the illusion of form.
Objectives for Lower Elementary
Students can:
Create light colors by adding white and dark colors by adding black.
Explain how different values can create different moods or feelings in artwork. For example, darker values might make a picture seem scary or gloomy, while lighter values might make it feel happy and bright.
Objectives for Upper Elementary Students can:
Create a simple value scale that goes from light to dark.
Mix colors to produce tints, tones, and shades.
Use tints and shades to show light and shadow to create the illusion of form and depth on a two-dimensional surface.
Use drawing techniques like cross-hatching and stippling as methods to vary value.
Paint a monochrome painting, using only one color but creating different values to define details.
What is form?
Form refers to objects that are three-dimensional, having length, width, and depth. They take up space and have volume, like a sculpture. Forms can be geometric (like cubes and spheres) or organic (natural and free-flowing).
Objectives for Lower Elementary
Students can:
Distinguish between 2-dimensional shapes and 3-dimensional forms.
Identify and name basic geometric forms like cubes, spheres, cones, cylinders, and pyramids.
Recognize and describe geometric and natural forms in their immediate environment.
Create forms using a variety of materials including clay, recycled objects, blocks, etc.
Draw lines that show the length, width, and depth of basic geometric forms on a two-dimensional surface.
Objectives for Upper Elementary
Students can:
Identify and name basic forms such as spheres, cubes, cylinders, cones, and pyramids in various contexts, including in artwork and in everyday objects.
Construct basic 3D forms from paper (nets) and combine them to create more complex structures or figures.
Draw forms using techniques that convey volume and depth, such as contour lines, shading, and linear perspective.
Create 3D forms (such as sculptures or models) using a variety of art materials and techniques.
What is texture?
Texture refers to the surface quality or feel of an object, which can be seen or felt. Textures can be actual (tactile) or implied (visual). They add depth and interest, helping to convey the sense of how something might feel just by looking at it.
Objectives for Lower Elementary
Students can:
Identify and describe a variety of textures in their surroundings using basic vocabulary like hard, soft, smooth, and rough,
Distinguish between tactile texture (how things really feel) and visual texture (how things look like they might feel).
Create tactile texture in art using different materials like foil, tissue paper, sand, cotton, and natural materials.
Use tools and materials to create visual textures like brushes, combs, forks, texture rubbings with crayons, and printing objects (like fruits and vegetables) in paint.
Use lines, shapes, and colors to create patterns to show texture.
Draw or paint images of animals, plants, and other objects that show different textures.
Objectives for Upper Elementary Students can:
Identify and describe textures with more specific terms like bumpy, prickly, silky, woven, etc.
Use a variety of drawing and painting techniques that mimic the look of textures like scales, fur, or bark.
Create sculptures, textured collages, or printmaking that emphasize tactile qualities.
Integrate texture thoughtfully in their compositions to add details and depth.
What is Space?
Space refers to the area around, between, and within objects. It can be positive (the area occupied by objects) or negative (the empty area around and between objects). Space helps to create the illusion of depth and perspective in a composition by creating a foreground, middle ground, and background.
Objectives for Lower Elementary
Students can:
Identify objects in the background (things that are far away) and foreground (things that are close up) in a scene.
Show objects in the foreground lower on the picture plane than objects in the background.
Draw or paint a landscape with a clear foreground, middle ground, and background.
Draw objects in a landscape using relative size (objects in the foreground are larger than in the background).
Objectives for Upper Elementary
Students can:
Draw or paint a landscape with a foreground, middle ground and background, and effectively use a variety of techniques to show depth including placement on the picture plane, relative size, and overlap.
Use one-point perspective drawing, where lines converge at a single point on the horizon to show depth in a cityscape.
Create an artwork that shows great distance using aerial perspective, where colors and textures change over distance.
Draw or arrange cut-out shapes on paper, to illustrate how both positive (the space occupied by objects) and negative space (the empty space around and between objects) to enhance visual interest and balance in a composition.
Create projects that involve optical illusions or visual tricks that use space (for example drawings that appear to have objects popping out of the paper).
Check out some ARTFUL LESSONS I’ve developed to help you teach the Elements of Art in the Elementary Classroom:
Elements of Art Posters for lower elementary
Elements of Art Lessons for lower elementary
Yearlong 1st grade Art Curriculum with 9 units that incorporate the Elements of Art
*These resources are also available in Spanish
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