Universal Principles of Art

48 LINEAR BASICS

LINE IS THE MOST BASIC AND MOST VERSATILE VISUAL ELEMENT

Line is a primal and fundamental component of visual thought. Some of the earliest known works of art are line drawings of seals on a cave wall in Nerja, Spain, that are approximately 42,000 years old. The construction of a line requires the most simple of mechanical means: a point is moved across a surface leaving behind a long, narrow mark. Almost all tribal cultures make images with lines, sometimes incised into a surface and sometimes drawn onto surfaces with a variety of implements and mediums. It appears, therefore, that the formation of representational shapes using combinations of lines is a very basic human behavior.

In more complex cultures, line has achieved ...