Design elements are the basic units of a work of art like painting, drawing or any other visual piece. They are the ingredients used in the creation of any artistic piece. Design elements used in art include point, line, shape, plane, color, space, texture, weight, and value. They are line, shape, shape, color, space and texture. The artist puts together visual elements to make a statement in art in the same way that we put words together to make a sentence. Every artist should know and understand them.

Line: is the product of a moving dot of a marking tool, such as a pencil that creates a path of connected dots on paper. This path of connected dots or mark left by a moving dot is known as a line. A line is defined as the trajectory of a point through space. This indicates that movement is needed to create a line. Examples of lines in the natural and man-made environment include tree leaves and branches, rivers, the outline of a bird, outlines of electrical appliances such as televisions, speakers, computers, etc. A skilled artist uses lines to control the movement of the viewer’s eyes. Lines guide the viewer’s eye into, around, and out of the visual images of a work of art.

Point: It is a small round point. It is usually created from the tips of writing tools such as pencil, ballpoint pen, crayon, etc. Pebbles, fruits, human heads are examples of points in nature.

Shape: A shape is defined as an enclosed area. It is an area that stands out from the contiguous or surrounding space due to a defined or implied limit. This area is clearly marked by one or more of the other five visual elements of the art. It is the artist’s unique way of representing ideas in two dimensions. The shapes are flat. They are limited to only two dimensions: length and width. A shape can have an outline or a boundary around it. Examples of shapes in the natural and man-made environment include human head shapes, stones, fruits, rectangles, squares, circles, etc.

Shape: It is an object with three dimensions, therefore, length, width (width) and depth (height). It is the shape of the volume or mass. Shapes can be grouped into two, namely geometric shapes and organic shapes. Geometric shapes include tables, pots, statues, etc. while examples of organic forms are stones, trees, etc. The only difference between shape and shape is that shapes don’t have depth, but shapes do.

Space: It is considered as an unlimited area. It is the distance between, around, above, below, and within shapes and masses. It is a measurable distance between preset points. A void or void in which other elements are actualized or viewed is space. Spaces can be seen in two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. There are two types of space, positive space, which is the space occupied by objects in an image, and negative space, which is the space around objects in a composition or image.

Texture: This is the character of the surface or the quality of the materials. It refers to how things feel or look as if they were touched. This can be smooth, rough, coarse, hard or soft. Texture can particularly be experienced through two of our senses, therefore the sense of sight and the sense of touch. However, the texture can be perceived in the mind. Texture comes in four basic forms: real, simulated, abstract, and invented.

Mass: It is the implicit or real volume, weight, size or magnitude of an object. In a two-dimensional drawing or painting, mass refers to a large area or shape of a color.

Color – Plays an important role in design elements. It is the reflection of white light on an object or sensations created in the eye by rays of broken light. Color may vary in degrees of opacity or brightness and lightness or darkness. All natural and man-made objects around us have colors. Tomatoes, flowers, plants, cars, clothes, etc. They display a variety of colors.

Value: It is the degree of lightness or darkness existing in the color. The value is determined by the amount of light reflected by a surface. The value is also known as the pitch.

These elements of artistic creation have their own distinctive characteristics that artists, especially amateurs in the art profession, need to be aware of in order for them to mature into creative giants in the art industry.