ELEMENTS OF COMPOSITION Element Definition Elements of Design The different aspects the artist can use to put together the image. Composition / Layout How image is put together. Where things are placed in relationship to one another and to the space of the canvas. Focal Point Where your attention is drawn to in the picture Color All of the colors as well as black, white and neutrals. Monochromatic means using one color. Complementary means using colors opposite one another on the color wheel Line actual lines in picture or lines created by the placement of other objects Texture Shape Texture is how rough or smooth something is, or the pattern it has. Texture can be real on 3 dimensional art, or represented on 2 dimensional art. The way in which the artist uses circles, squares, rectangles, ovals and other shapes in the art. Form How light and shading techniques make a 2 dimensional object look like it has 3 dimensions. Value Degree of light and dark in different parts of the picture. Size Size can refer to the overall size of the image and also the relative size of items in the image. Symbolic Elements Specific parts of the design which have symbolic or historical meaning (such as a cross for Christianity, or triangles for the Trinity). Key Questions Which elements of design are most important in this piece (color, line, texture, shape, form, value, size, text, movement) What is main figure? How are other figures placed in relation to main figure? What is left out? Why important Meaning comes from what the artist uses and also what they don't use. The way different parts of an image are put together draws the viewers’ attention to some parts more than others. It also creates tone, mood and meaning. What is the focal point? What elements of design does the artist use to create the focal point? What colors are used? How do these colors affect the tone, mood and meaning of the image? Are colors used in predictable or unpredictable ways (example: predictable is red for danger) How do lines draw your attention towards or away from certain parts of the picture? How are different Color can create meaning by creating moods, highlighting particular parts of the image, connecting aspects of the image, or by being symbolic. Where is texture in the image and how does this texture create an expectation in the audience of a particular touch sensation? Texture links images to real objects and the use of senses other than sight. How are shapes used in the art? Where does shape or relationships between shapes help your eye to focus? Where has the artist used shading or light to highlight some aspect of the image? Does some part of the image stand out as having 3 dimensions? How are light and dark used in this picture? Is there a symbolic use of light and dark? Does the artist use light or dark to highlight the focal point? Why did the artist choose this size for the piece? What is the meaning of the difference between sizes of elements in the image? Are any of the aspects of this piece symbolic? Does the artist intend to use the symbolism directly or to invert it? Understanding the focal point helps you understand the meaning of the picture. Artists use lines to draw your attention to the focal point. Our eyes tend to focus on familiar shapes and see shapes in twodimensional art through shading and use of light. Form can contribute to making an image seem more real, and also to add importance to a part of the picture. Value can be used along with color. Extreme changes in value create contrast which often is used to provide meaning. Variation in the size of shapes and lines indicates relative significance. Symbols draw on cultural meanings which can work differently for different audiences. More terms: Principle: What it means: Balance How the different visual elements are distributed so that they seem stable or unstable. Emphasis What catches your attention when you look at the image? Movement How your eye moves in a path through the picture, sometimes stopping to focus on certain parts. Pattern and Repetition Is there an object or a symbol that repeats in the design? Proportion Variety and Rhythm The relationship of sizes inside the piece of art, for example the size of one building to another or a head to the body. Variety is the use of several elements of design to make the audience see the image as dynamic and in an active rhythm. For what to look: Symmetrical balance means things on both sides are even, asymmetrical balance means that the design is weighted on one side, radical balance means things are organized around a center point. The artist usually uses size, texture, shape, color or some other element to make one part of the image stand out as the focal point. Where do your eyes go, and what makes your eyes move through the picture in a certain way. Is it lines? Colors? Shapes? Edges? If it is repeated, it is probably important to the meaning. You might want to find out what that image means. Are the proportions realistic or distorted? See how the different elements of design work together to produce a mood or meaning. How to Cite Visuals For Essay 3’s source documentation, you will only be citing the actual visual image you have chosen as the primary source for your essay. Remember that you cannot use any information from articles or informational text near the visual image because that would be written by a separate author and would need its own citation, and sources other than the visual image itself cannot be included in the paper. So you cannot include information about the company or organization that created the PSA or the artist of the cartoon, for example, or details about the historical setting of a political cartoon you are using unless it is “common knowledge.” In other words, your essay should only include information that comes directly and exclusively from the image itself and your own insights and analytical ideas garnered from your own personal observations and critical thinking skills. Including information that you get from outside of the actual visual image will earn you an automatic zero on the essay, so please be careful to avoid that – it’s PLAGIARISM. To document your visual image, you will need to include a Works Cited page at the end of your essay and write a complete, updated 8th edition MLA source entry. The entry will follow the example given in the Norton’s PDF that is at the top of the Research section of our course. If you are writing about an advertisement you found online, the source entry will be written as follows: Name of Product or Company. Advertisement or Description of ad. Date. Name of Host Site, URL. Accessed Day Month Year. EX: PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Joaquin Phoenix: “Cruelty Doesn’t Suit Me” PSA. N.d. PETA.org, www.peta.org/media/psa/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2019. If your paper’s image is a political cartoon you found online, the source entry will be written as follows: Artist’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of Cartoon.” Title of Site, Date, URL. Accessed Day Month Year. EX: Munroe, Randall. “Up Goer Five.” XKCD, 12 Nov. 2012, xkcd.com/1133/. Accessed 22 Apr. 2019. If your paper’s image is a photograph you found online, the source entry will be written as follows: Artist’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of Photograph.” Year created. Name of Site, URL. Accessed Day Month Year. EX: Griner, David. “KKK Rally Image.” 2013. Poynter, www.poynter.org/2013/how-kkk-rallyimage-found-new-life-20-years-after-it-was-published/199985/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2019. Note that when you write the URL, leave out the https:// part of the address and begin with www or whatever follows those slashes. Also, months should be abbreviated and no punctuation is used other than the period after the abbreviation: 2 Feb. 2019. Always end source entries with a period. Be precise and picky about punctuation in source entries! To cite the image in the text (writing the in-text citation parenthetical), you will simply write a parenthetical directly below the image you paste into the first page. So your essay should have the regular heading in the upper left corner (of the first page only); an original title (not the title of the image or product, but a title that reflects the point and content of your work) centered on the next line; the visual image itself; then parentheses below the image. The information in the parentheses should match the FIRST word of the source entry as it is written on the Works Cited page. IF the entry begins with a company or product name that starts with “the,” “a/an,” leave that word out of the in-text citation. The in-text citations for the images referenced above would be written as (PETA), (Munroe), and (Griner). No page numbers are needed since the visuals are online and don’t have numbered pages. Just FYI, IF there was no author credited for the political cartoon source, the source entry would have to begin with the title (or whatever title we could give it if there was no clear title for it either), and then the citation would be (“Up”). Essay #3: Visual Analysis POINTS, FORMAT, + LENGTH: This essay is worth 100 points. The minimum length is 2 FULL pages (maximum 4), which does NOT include the visual image that you paste into the essay or the works cited page entry at the end of the essay. In other words, you need 2 full pages of written text. The essay must be submitted in MLA format. Any essay that is not in MLA will receive a large point deduction. SOURCES: You are required to follow 8th edition MLA source documentation guidelines to document the visual image you choose to write about. NO other sources can be included. The essay should be written based on your own thoughts and ideas about how the visual elements work to create meaning. To document the visual image, you will need to write an in-text citation parenthetical directly below the image AND a full MLA-style Works Cited page entry on the last page of the essay. See the document posted in the course Essays section titled “How to Cite Visuals” for more details. If MLA source documentation is new to you, you can read more about how it works in documents posted in the course Research section and/or your textbook’s MLA section. If you use any information that comes from a source that is not documented, your paper will receive a zero for plagiarism. Please remember that simply writing a web address where a source can be found does NOT count as documenting your source. ASSIGNMENT DETAILS: Write a visual analysis of a PSA (Public Service Announcement), political cartoon, or meaningful photograph. The essay should explain how the visual elements in the image work together to create an overall message / argument. The primary components of the essay are: 1. Analytical language that shows how the visual elements in the image work together to convey the meaning of the image; 2. MLA source documentation for the visual image. Follow these basic steps, then read the rest of this document to put your work into its essay form: 1. Find a good visual image to use (a PSA or political cartoon or photograph). 2. Analyze the rhetorical situation (details below). 3. Analyze the visual elements: Use the “Elements of Composition” document to formulate visual analyses points to discuss throughout the essay. 4. Think about (and make notes) how the visual elements work to create meaning. 5. Write a source entry for the image; use the “How to Cite Visuals” document for help. TO BEGIN: Choose a PSA, political cartoon, or a photograph that is complex enough to analyze. Photographs can be harder since you cannot use information written near the photo (only the photo itself), but there are some that work. A PSA or political cartoon is often rich enough to analyze on its own. The image you choose can include text (written words on the image itself), but note that the focus of your analysis should be on the visual elements of the image. No source other than the image itself is allowed in the essay, so you cannot discuss any kind of article or information that is outside of the image in your paper. See document posted in the course for suggestions / examples of good visuals to use in this type of essay. Paste a copy of the image into your document directly below the heading and the original title you give to your essay. Include an in-text citation parenthetical directly below the image. See information in “How to Cite Visuals” document and/or in the Norton’s MLA Guidebook – Updated PDF posted in the Research section of our course. The INTRODUCTION of the essay should give a brief description of the image and include information about its rhetorical situation. What is the image’s title and who is its creator (if known)? Does the image promote a brand or product? What is the image about? Who is the target audience? How did you come to that conclusion? What is the visual’s major claim/argument/purpose? The rhetorical situation is basically the context of the image, which is determined by the purpose or message of the image, the sender/creator of the image, and the audience. Think about how these elements work together to create the meaning we process automatically when we see the image but don’t usually stop to analyze and interpret. The last sentence (or two) of the first paragraph must be a specific THESIS. Your thesis should give readers an overview of what to expect in the essay. It should assert the main visual elements you will analyze and discuss AND the conclusion you make about how those elements create a message or argument that influences those who see it. The visual elements you mention broadly in the thesis then become the major points in your body paragraphs as you delve into explaining them more specifically. THE VISUAL ANALYSIS PARAGRAPHS: Examine the image you chose with a critical eye. Look closely at the various elements of composition within it and how they work to create the meaning of the visual. You may wish to start with the focal point of the image. The paragraphs that analyze the visual elements in the image should “walk” your reader through the image by describing how the eye moves across the picture. Be sure to explain how these elements support the ad’s purpose. To provide a full and in-depth analysis of the visual image, you should review the resources posted in our course’s Essay section, which includes a list of questions that will help you brainstorm about visual analysis; and the video assigned, which explains how to analyze images. Use the informational materials related to visuals as a starting point to help generate ideas and to help you incorporate visual analysis language in your essay. Consider elements such as angles, composition, framing, lighting, color, etc. You should also think about the context and sub-context found in the image and how all the elements work together to affect people who view the images. This is where the “Elements of Composition” chart will be the most helpful to you. CTRL + click the image below, or find it in the Essays section of our course. After looking at the visual composition of the image, consider the text included with it — any words — and how the image might be using rhetorical techniques, figures of speech, diction, or other such textual strategies to contribute to the meaning. The CONCLUSION of the essay should restate/rephrase the thesis – the conclusion should never use the exact same wording as the introduction, of course – and major elements/techniques that you examined, and conclude your discussion of the meaning / argument presented by the visual image. THE LAST PAGE = WORKS CITED After your concluding paragraph, title the last page of your essay Works Cited (that should be centered at the top of the last page). Write a full MLA-style citation entry for the visual image. See the “How to Cite Visuals” document and/or the Norton’s MLA Guidebook – Updated PDF to write the source entry. Essays that do not include full MLA works cited page entries will be given a maximum grade of 50. Source documentation will also be an important part of the upcoming research paper, so now is a good time to learn or review it. Also, it is important to write titles correctly in your essays. Titles of PSA ads and cartoon titles are written in quotation marks.
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