Chuck Close Part 2: Visual Elements and Design Principles Visual Elements Chuck Close was an artist who did portraits of friends, family, and himself. In these portraits he used visual elements such as, values, lines, pattern, colors, and texture. Close had multiple types of portraits he would make, each of them displaying these visual elements in different ways. While Close has many portraits in different styles, we will be focusing on the portrait titled “Leslie”. Starting with the values used by Close, he made both colored portraits and grayscale portraits. His use of values in the colored portrait “Leslie”, is mostly within the lighter colors. Seen within the background, the skin tone, the clothing all have the lighter values that all work …show more content…
I find that many of Close’s portraits have a warmer color scheme overall. After looking closer, we can see the use of cool colors to compliment the warmer colors and bring attention to specific features of the face. This can be seen in “Leslie”, the cool toned background allows for the warm tone of the skin complexion and the warm undertones in the hair to stand out. As well as the cool toned eyes, stand out significantly due to the contrast with the warm skin. Finally, texture is important when making these portraits seem realistic. The difference in textures helps to define different parts of the portrait. The texture used for the hair is separate from that of the skin texture, and the skin texture is separate from the texture of the clothing. Keeping each of these elements separate by using different textures, gives the art more depth and detail. Design Principles Close uses each of the design principles to make his art stand out and make sure they are cohesive in Close’s style. In the portrait titled “Leslie”, Close shows rhythm, unity, balance, variety, emphasis, scale, and rhythm to tell a story and create a photo-realistic portrait of his