Art Formal Analysis
Examining the formal qualities of Homer Watson’s painting Horse and Rider In A Landscape was quite interesting. I chose to analyze this piece as apposed to the others because it was the piece I liked the least, therefore making me analyze it more closely and discover other aspects of the work, besides aesthetics.
The texture of the canvas works very well with the subject matter portrayed in the painting. The grassy hill side and the leaves of the trees are especially complimented by the canvas. It makes the leaves feel like they are slightly moving, this combined with the lack of detail itself the leaves. This is contrasted nicely with the very detailed renderings of the trunks and branches of the trees, the conscious decision to put so much effort into the tree itself and then to use obvious brushwork in the leaves makes the trees much more firm and immovable in the landscape. The brushstrokes are very clean and precise on the trees in the background.
There is a lot of repetition of the vertical lines of the forest in the background of the painting, these vertical lines draw the eye up into the clouds and the sky. These repeated vertical lines contrast harshly with a horizontal line that divides the canvas almost exactly in half. The background, upper portion of the canvas, is quite static and flat, whereas the foreground and middle ground of the painting have quite a lot of depth. This static effect is made up for in the immaculate amount of d...
The painting is organized simply. The background of the painting is painted in an Impressionist style. The blurring of edges, however, starkly contrasts with the sharp and hard contours of the figure in the foreground. The female figure is very sharp and clear compared to the background. The background paint is thick compared to the thin lines used to paint the figures in the foreground. The thick paint adds to the reduction of detail for the background. The colors used to paint the foreground figures are vibrant, as opposed to the whitened colors of the Impressionist background. The painting is mostly comprised of cool colors but there is a range of dark and light colors. The light colors are predominantly in the background and the darker colors are in the foreground. The vivid color of the robe contrasts with the muted colors of the background, resulting in an emphasis of the robe color. This emphasis leads the viewer's gaze to the focal part of the painting: the figures in the foreground. The female and baby in the foreground take up most of the canvas. The background was not painted as the artist saw it, but rather the impression t...
An artwork will consist of different elements that artists bring together to create different forms of art from paintings, sculptures, movies and more. These elements make up what a viewer sees and to help them understand. In the painting Twilight in the Wilderness created by Frederic Edwin Church in 1860 on page 106, a landscape depicting a sun setting behind rows of mountains is seen. In this painting, Church used specific elements to draw the viewer’s attention directly to the middle of the painting that consisted of the sun. Church primarily uses contrast to attract attention, but it is the different aspects of contrast that he uses that makes the painting come together. In Twilight in the Wilderness, Church uses color, rhythm, and focal
Examining the formal qualities of Thomas Birch’s painting An American Ship in Distress was very interesting. This paper will analyze and illustrate what I saw in this particular piece of artwork. The paper will also discuss the art elements such as line, shape, color, texture, scale, and composition of the artwork.
Thomas Moran’s painting captures the essence of the true spirit of the Yellowstone Canyon and overwhelms any viewers who go up to it. With a size of 7’ by 12’ and a mastery display of vivid colors with hues of orange and yellow contrasted with the dark cold colors of the shadows, anyone would be overwhelmed. Under the cool shade, the path extending in front invites the viewer to join the tiny figures in the distance who seem to overlook the grand valley of the canyon below. The view from where those people are in the distance could be quite breathtaking, and this adds to the painting’s value. Moran captured the public and the government’s fascinations with the beauties of America’s Wild West. Moran’s mastery of composition within landscape
The first artwork I chose for the formal analysis project is The Tiger by Ito Jakuchù originally painted in 1755. This painting is of a tiger licking its paw in the grass underneath a tree branch. There seems to be two diagonal planes as the tiger is leaning forward and sitting erect. There is a horizontal plane from what appear to be branches above the tiger. The painting has asymmetrical balance as the elements are equally distributed to balance the top and the bottom of the space. The artwork demonstrates several types of line. There are curved lines used in the tiger’s stripes. There are also diagonal, vertical and horizontal lines used in the background for the grass and the overhanging tree branch. The curved and wavy lines used in the tiger’s body, for example in the shoulder muscles, imply movement in addition to the curve in the tiger’s tail. The color scheme used in this painting seems to be complementary to one another as the artist used orange and brown tones with blue and red-orange accents for the tiger’s eyes and tongue. Black is used throughout the p...
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
Masks have been mentioned in Venetian history dating back to the thirteenth century. They are formed out of paper-mache and decorated with various paints, gems, feathers, and other decorations (Magic of Venezia Mask Story). The Venetian Republic was composed of intensive social and economic inequality, making for a unique culture. Such inequalities resulted in the use of masks for the purpose of concealing an individual’s identity. Venice, being such a small city, made it difficult to keep secrets but the use of the mask helped make it a bit easier. The masks served the social purpose of keeping all citize...
In order to understand the effects of the Spanish Civil War, the atmosphere of Spain prior to 1936 needs to be understood as well. Spain, unlike major European powers, never experienced a bourgeois revolution and was therefore still dominated by a significant aristocracy. However, Spain had gone through several civil wars and revolutions making violence one of the most common devices for change. It, also, had undergone several cycles of reform, reaction from the opposition, and reversal by military uprising led by a dictator before 1936 (Preston 18).
Howard Pyle was born on March 5 1853 in Wilmington, Del and died on November 9, 1911 on Florence. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Mr. Pyle was an “American illustrator, painter, and author, best known for the children’s books that he wrote and illustrated.”(Editors of EB). Paul Giambarba, writer of 100 Years of Illustration states that “Academics usually refer to Howard Pyle as one of the greatest illustrators of his time.”(Giambarba) and in his personal opinion “was the greatest and the best” (Giambarba) illustrator. Paul goes onto to state that “Pyle was not content to continue copying himself in the same old way as they did for the most part, and he was at least as prodigious, turning out two illustrations a week, or 3,300 published illustrations during a 35-year career. Included among these were almost 200 stories that he wrote as well as illustrated.”(Giambarba)
The Big Bang Theory is one of the most important, and most discussed topics in cosmology today. As such, it encompasses several smaller components that attempt to explain what happened in the moments after creation, and how the universe we know today came from such a fiery, chaotic universe in the wake of the Big Bang. One major component of the Big Bang theory is nucleosynthesis. We know that several stellar phenomena (including stellar fusion and various types of super novae) are responsible for the formation of all heavy elements up through Plutonium, however, after the advent of the Big Bang theory, we needed a way to explain what types of matter were created to form the earliest stars.!
31-40), there is a vast difference between his piece and Georges Seurat’s. Instead of using dots to create the effect for his piece, Van Gogh primarily uses small lined brush strokes heavy with paint giving a palpable appearance. Most visible is the predominant use of the color blue, ranging in different levels of intensity from a color so deep it appears to almost be black to the palest of blues, bordering on being white. Among these many shades of blues, yellow, white, black and a reddish brown are also visible. To balance the extravagant whirling skyscape located above the small village, Van Gogh includes in the foreground a large, gnarled looking tree, opposite side of the canvas to the imposing, glowing moon. Motion is noticeable within the sky, wherein the clouds and stars carry similar appearance to large waves. As though mimicking the movement from above, the mountains below follow along similar curvature as the clouds and stars, making it challenging for the viewer to determine where precisely the sky starts and the earth
Free radicals are atoms or groups of atoms with an unpaired number of electrons. Free radicals can be formed when oxygens interact with certain molecules. Once they are formed, free radical can start to make things go wrong. A main concern is the damage they can do when they react with DNA. Cells may function poorly or die if a free radical comes in contact with is. To prevent the damage a free radical can cause, the body uses antioxidants as a defense mechanism Antioxidants are compounds that have the ability to prevent or repair the damage caused by the process of oxidation. Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which molecules of a substance are broken down into atoms, where the atoms involved lose electrons. With losing electrons, free radicals
In 1948, Gamow predicted that the radiation from the big bang nucleosynthesis must still be filling the universe. The universe expanding can branch of to even more theories......
Many people every day speculate at how the universe was created and how all of space and matter began. Many people support a theory called The Big Bang Theory this theory states: fifteen billion years ago all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point an explosion known as the big bang occurred all matter and energy moved away at a very fast rate. This theory is supported by many including me.
There are three major glands in the endocrine system, which are the thyroid gland, adrenal glands, the ovary and testes, and the pituitary gland. A section of the brain above the pituitary gland called the hypothalamus controls the endocrine system and communicates with...