An Ordination of Selected Artists, Painters, and Designers: Line, Composition, Color

Scholars and students are often interested in the normative principles described by noted designers, painting, and drawing authorities. This study explores how similar and different these artists are in a quantitative manner. This research transforms a list of 250 principles from twelve artist’s(from Europe and North America: Robert Oliver, Michael Doyle, James Richards, William Kent, Humphry Repton, and Jon Burley, Wassily Kandinsky, Thomas Moran, Claude Monet, Robert Wood, and Jackson Pollack into numerical data, and then analyzes the data through Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The result of PCA indicates that there are eight dimensions greater than one (considered meaningful dimensions), explaining 86% of the variance. A plot derived from the two most major dimensions revealed that those addressing drawing and sketching have a stronger emphasis upon line. Those individuals who are interested in planning and designing spaces are centered around composition and were positioned in the middle of the ordination. Many of the painters have a special emphasis related to color and were the most dispersed group. Considering that with 250 variables, the individuals explored could be plotted widely apart, the results revealed the distances between the individuals studied shared numerous ideas and were not excessively different in their approach concerning underlying principle.

Keywords: Design arts, fine arts, design principles, architectural drawing, drafting techniques.