Every painting is built from eight visual elements, color, line, shape, form, value, space, negative space and texture, arranged according to eleven principles of design. This page brings all nineteen together in one place.
Elements and principles in 30 seconds
Elements are the raw material: color, line, shape, form, value, space, negative space and texture. A painting cannot exist without at least some of them.
Principles are the rules for arranging those elements: balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, pattern, proportion, repetition, rhythm, unity, variety and harmony.
An element answers what is on the canvas. A principle answers how it is organized. Line is an element. Rhythm, built from repeated lines, is a principle.
The same painting usually demonstrates several elements and several principles at once. Raphael's School of Athens uses space, line and form as elements, and balance and emphasis as principles, in the same fresco.
Art teachers do not all agree on the exact count. Some list seven elements instead of eight, or nine principles instead of eleven. This guide uses eight and eleven.
The 8 elements of art
Eight pages, one per element, each built around real paintings rather than definitions alone.
Color
Van Eyck built the green gown in The Arnolfini Portrait from thin translucent layers of copper green, and Van Gogh painted The Night Café in blood red and green to express what he called the terrible passions of humanity. The full guide to color in art covers twelve paintings.
Line
This element runs from Hokusai's Manga sketches and Dürer's Adam and Eve engraving to Egon Schiele's self portraits, by way of Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder Print and Van Gogh's reed pen drawings. See the full set in line in art.
Shape
Exekias built an entire black figure vase around silhouettes, Malevich reduced a painting to a single black square, and Matisse cut shapes directly out of colored paper late in his life. The guide to shape in art walks through both geometric and biomorphic shape.
Form
Form is what makes the figures on Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling read as solid bodies rather than flat outlines, and what makes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring read as a rounded face under raking light. Nine paintings, from the tomb of Nebamun to Botticelli's Birth of Venus, are in form in art.
Value
Value is how light or dark a color is, and it is the entire subject of Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew, Leonardo's sfumato in the Mona Lisa, and Ansel Adams's zone system for photography. The full breakdown is in value in art.
Space
Masaccio's Trinity was one of the first paintings to fake a real architectural space on a flat wall, and Velázquez's Las Meninas is still argued over for how its space actually works. Both, plus ten more, are in space in art.
Negative space
The empty part of a picture can carry as much weight as the painted part, the same principle behind the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo and the concept of ma in Hasegawa Tōhaku's Pine Trees screen. See it worked out in negative space in art, which builds directly on the space element above.
Texture
Van Gogh piled paint into ridges you can still see catching light on the Sunflowers, and Klimt covered The Kiss in real gold leaf. The full range, from Dürer's Young Hare to Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, is in texture in art.
The 11 principles of design
Eleven pages, one per principle, each anchored in specific paintings rather than abstract rules.
Balance
Raphael's School of Athens is built on a symmetry exact enough to put Plato and Aristotle dead center, while Degas deliberately threw L'Absinthe off balance to make the scene feel unplanned. Both approaches are in balance in art.
Contrast
Contrast is what makes Caravaggio's dark rooms and Goya's Third of May 1808 read as violent before you register a single detail. The guide to contrast in art goes painting by painting, from Rembrandt's Night Watch to Malevich's Black Square.
Emphasis
Every painting in this guide tells your eye exactly where to look first, whether it is the raised hand in Leonardo's Last Supper or the lit bird cage in Joseph Wright of Derby's Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. See how in emphasis in art.
Movement
Van Gogh painted the sky itself as a spiral in The Starry Night, and Muybridge's chronophotography of a galloping horse settled a debate painters had argued for centuries. The guide to movement as a principle of art covers both, plus Bernini's marble Apollo and Daphne.
Pattern
Pattern repeats a motif until it becomes structure: the geometric bands on the Dipylon amphora, the tiled walls of the Alhambra, the gold mosaic in Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer I. The guide to pattern in art runs from ancient Greece to Warhol.
Proportion
Painters bend proportion on purpose more often than they follow it: Parmigianino's Madonna with the Long Neck, Ingres's Grande Odalisque with several vertebrae too many, Modigliani's stretched necks. The guide to proportion in art also takes apart the golden ratio myth attached to Botticelli's Birth of Venus.
Repetition
Monet painted Rouen Cathedral more than thirty times to catch the light changing, and Warhol repeated the same soup can thirty two times to drain it of a single meaning. Both strategies are in repetition in art.
Rhythm
Uccello lined up broken lances like a metronome in the Battle of San Romano, and Mondrian turned a Manhattan grid into something close to a beat in Broadway Boogie Woogie. The guide to rhythm in art tracks the pulse through ten more paintings.
Unity
Unity is what keeps a painting from reading as separate pieces: one dominant tone in Whistler's Nocturne, one repeated brushstroke in Van Gogh's Starry Night, one architectural frame in Raphael's School of Athens. See how in unity in art.
Variety
Bosch crammed the Garden of Earthly Delights with more invented creatures than any single painting before it, and Bruegel packed dozens of separate games into Children's Games. The guide to variety in art is the counterpart to unity, above.
Harmony
Whistler named his paintings after music, Nocturnes and Symphonies, because he wanted colors that behave like notes in the same key. That idea, running from Vermeer's blue and yellow in The Milkmaid to Rothko's color fields, is the subject of harmony in art.
Quick answers
What is the difference between elements and principles of art? Elements are the raw visual building blocks, color, line, shape, form, value, space and texture. Principles are the rules for arranging those elements, such as balance, contrast and rhythm.
How many elements of art are there? This guide counts eight: color, line, shape, form, value, space, negative space and texture. Some courses group negative space inside space and count seven instead.
How many principles of design are there? This guide counts eleven: balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, pattern, proportion, repetition, rhythm, unity, variety and harmony. Other lists run shorter or longer.
Is composition the same thing as the principles of art? Composition is the result. The principles are the tools a painter uses to get there.
One last fact
The FedEx logo hides an arrow in the negative space between the E and the X. Painters have been deciding what to leave empty, and calling it a principle of design, since long before anyone needed to ship a package.