All the principles of design you have learned in painting apply to silk painting as well.

                               ------- by Sanchia Lin

The elements of silk painting design include line, shape, light, color, texture, and space.  All these principles of design you have learned in painting apply to silk painting as well.

As you can see from the above thumbnail, I used line to outline shapes, to evoke forms and movement.  Sometimes, line can also help us create shadows and visual illusions.

Shape can be communicated through dominant line, patches of color, and texture.  It is good to view your subject as series of abstract shapes before starting your painting or drawing.  Developing this skill of seeing the large shapes within the overall picture allows you to better understand your subject and do well on your composition planning.

The value of the color of a surface is in its lightness or darkness.  A difference in value creates a contrast in lightness and darkness.  Paintings that strongly contrast light and dark often make forceful differentiation between objects and ground.  Choosing the right light can help signal the time of day or the season of year.  It can also suggest local, define distance, illuminate form and texture.  Perhaps most intriguing of all, light can help us establish the mood of a painting.

Color is a powerful element to energize our art works.  You can use color to create the effect you want.  For example: you can use color to capture the spirit of nature, create excitement, to unify a painting, to tell a story, to evoke a time of day and the mystery of night, and to establish the mood of a painting.  You can see through the above thumbnail of my silk painting, color is an important element of my art works.  I always experiment with the result that I want.