Eduqas A-Level Art and Design visual language and the formal elements overview quiz quiz

Knowing the dates and names of major art history movements and periods

Using the formal elements deliberately to create effect and meaning

Writing long, detailed essays about the artists you have studied in depth

Copying chosen artists as accurately and faithfully as your skill allows

Line

Composition

Texture

Moderation

Weight, speed and texture of a mark carry feeling (heavy feels urgent, scratchy feels anxious)

It cannot change the feeling at all; only the subject matter of the drawing carries any feeling

Only the colour of the drawing changes its feeling, never the character of the marks themselves

Only the overall size of the drawing changes its feeling, never the weight or speed of the marks

Only pure black against pure white with no transitional mid-tones at all

Highlight, mid-tone, core shadow and reflected light

A single flat even grey covering the whole form

Random scattered patches of tone with no light source

There is no difference between them; the two words describe exactly the same tonal effect on a work

Low-key is brighter and lighter overall, while high-key is the darker, heavier and more shadowed option

Low-key is mostly dark with high contrast (dramatic); high-key is mostly light with low contrast (gentle)

Both terms mean precisely the same thing as chiaroscuro, the modelling of form with strong light and shade

Red, green and blue

Warm, cool and neutral

Primary, secondary and tertiary

Hue, value and saturation

They create the strongest contrast and intensify each other

They blend optically into a flat neutral grey when set next to one another

They cancel out and become almost invisible to the eye against each other

Nothing happens at all; placing them side by side has no visual effect

Both warm and cool colours stay perfectly flat and create no sense of spatial depth

Warm colours advance toward the viewer; cool colours recede

Cool colours advance toward the viewer while warm colours fall back and recede away

Colour itself has no effect on depth; only line and perspective can suggest distance

Whatever element happens to sit exactly dead centre, regardless of any contrast or emphasis

The largest area of blank, empty negative space, which always pulls the eye most strongly

The main centre of interest, emphasised by contrast, leading lines, isolation or placement

Whichever object has been pushed right into the far corner of the frame, away from the centre

Divide the work into three equal bands of colour, each filling one third of the surface

Limit the composition to no more than exactly three separate objects within the frame

Spend roughly one third of your working time on each separate element in the composition

Place key elements on the lines or intersections of a 3x3 grid for a dynamic balance

Actual texture is real physical surface (impasto, collage); visual texture is an illusion made by marks

They are exactly the same thing; both words simply describe how rough or smooth a surface looks

Visual texture is the real built-up physical surface, while actual texture is only ever drawn or implied

Only three-dimensional sculpture can have any texture; flat paintings and drawings cannot have it

Surface never carries meaning of its own; it is purely a neutral support for the image on top

A rough, scarred, built-up surface can convey age, decay or struggle in itself

Only smooth, evenly polished surfaces are able to carry any meaning in a finished work

Meaning comes only from the subject matter depicted, never from how the surface is handled