Lesson Four
Other Forms of Art
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There are a few parts of art that we haven't discussed that we are now going to go over. Of course there are many art topics we could go over, but there are so many that one class won't be enough to cover it all. We'll start off by talking about some other forms of art, specifically art in music and graphic design. Then we'll take a look at ways of measuring color using a color wheel and hex triplets. It just wouldn't be an art class if we didn't delve a bit into arts and crafts, so next we'll play around with those.
Let's begin with art in music. When we think of art, we tend to think primarily about visual arts like painting and drawing. We briefly mentioned the performing arts in lesson two like the branches of dance and how they are also a form of art. Music has a lot of theory and rhythm to it that takes a while to set up and perform. There's a certain art to picking which instruments to play which part in a band and choosing what notes make for the perfect melody. If you pay particular attention to a piece of music, you can hear the different sounds all put together to create it.
Graphic design is the art of communicating through visual arts. They are needed to get a message across through art instead of words. Graphic designers are needed in almost every field for advertisements, logos, and banners. Stepping outside, you may be able to spot a form of graphic design through street signs, a campaign sign in someone's front yard, maybe a bumper sticker on a car. They are used to show where a hospital, train station, or handicapped spot is including where you're able to swim, when you need to stop your car, where you should yield instead of merge, and to point you in the direction of the airport among an infinite amount of other uses.
Below you will see a color wheel. A color wheel is an organized circle sort of starting with red and ending with purple (though there really isn't a start and end to a color wheel) touching every color possible in between. They show how colors melt together and how they're all related. Notice how the colors change into each other. In the middle of some color wheels it gets darker to represent the color black and in others it gets lighter to represent the color white.
Hex triplets are one of the many ways of classifying colors. They are used to input into a computer program so the program knows exactly what color you're talking about. Colors are categorized by three parts that show the percentage of red, green, and blue they are. Here is an example of a hex triplet: #FF0000. The first two digits - FF - stand for 100%. Since red is the first part, it means this color is 100% red. The next two digits - 00 - mean the color is 0% green. The last two digits - 00 - mean the color is 0% blue. Altogether, #FF0000 is the hex triplet for the color red. If a hex triplet has 80 as one of its numbers, that means it's 50% of the color. C0 means it's 75% of the color. Of course, it gets more complicated than that as there are many different mixtures and percentages.
A major topic of any art class should be arts and crafts. Arts and crafts are also known as handicrafts and are used to make beautiful pieces of art from delicately woven blankets to ornate decorations. Brooms, picture frames, clothing, shoes, and handwoven arts are all forms of these crafts. There are shops dedicated to just selling arts and crafts known as handicraft shops. Handicrafts are made either completely by hand or by using simple tools like scissors and glue. They are not made with expensive machinery or in large factories.
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While handicrafts can be a very refined form of art that produces beautiful products, it is also popular among children for arts and crafts involving cutting and pasting and other activities. Of course adults also find these types of arts and crafts as a way to express themselves and quite a fun hobby. Some forms of these types of arts and crafts can be table top decorations for holidays and parties.
