Anna's Art Blog: Lines in Art

Lines are an important part of creating art, especially in drawing. In elementary school one of the first things we did was draw a horizontal line on the blackboard. But lines are used for more than just drawing, artists need to use lines for painting brush strokes, or sculpting, making sure the sculpture lines up the way they want. Sometimes the lines in a painting or drawing aren’t as obvious as in other paintings.

However, in a painting by Keith Haring, Untitled the lines in the painting and the outlines of objects in the painting are obvious. The outline for an angel and a dolphin are done in green and filled in with black, the ocean also has green lines and the entire painting is a red background making the bright green lines stand out even more.

Another painting is The Embarkation for Cythera by Jean-Antoine Watteau. Its a painting where the lines are not as obvious, and possibly weren’t intentional by the artist since it would take a person who is knowledgeable about art to realize that there are more lines in the painting besides the images curving into the background, and that there are also lines with how the peoples faces are mostly pointed a certain way. These lines are “implied” so even though they may or may not have been intentional by the artist they can still be picked up on by someone seeing the painting.

An example of art thats not drawing or painting is the photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson of Aquila Abruzzi Italy. The lines are part of the composition. The lines of a staircase directs someone looking at the photograph to a women who is framed by the lines of an archway. And a railing further back leads to a group of people. In this case the photographer used the lines on purpose to show the directions he wanted people to look in the photograph. Lines are usually a necessary part of art but they can also be used for a certain purpose to add to the piece of art.