Art

Elements of Art

Pattern

Pattern is the arrangement of a series of one or more repeated lines, forms, shapes, colors, textures, and/or spaces. Patterns can also be uniform or planned, whether produced by nature (like the hexagon shapes of a honeycomb) or produced by people (like the rectangular shapes of bricks).

Nature is a good place to recognize patterns; nature’s patterns are everywhere. The photographs that follow illustrate examples of random patterns. The patterns of the lake’s ripples and giraffe’s spots are not planned or uniform.

Patterns can also be radial, where the shapes branch out from a central point. This type of pattern is illustrated in this photograph.

You have seen a variety of one-color patterns. Patterns may involve more than one color, and they may use space in various ways. In the following example, note the switch of the negative and positive spaces as the circles and squares repeat themselves.