Comparing Banana Flower And The Holy Family With A Kneeling Monastic Saint

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Banana Flower by Georgia O’Keeffe and The Holy Family with a Kneeling Monastic Saint by Elisabetta Sirani are the two pieces of artwork I chose to compare. Banana Flower is one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s many charcoal drawings. It is said that her love for nature inspired a lot of her flower drawings. Banana Flower is an example of dry media. Dry media includes charcoal, chalk, metalpoint, pastel, and graphite. This particular drawing was made using charcoal. Charcoal has to be used on a special type of paper with a rough surface. Charcoal is made from burnt wood and smudges very easily. Fortunately, a synthetic resin fixative has been invented to refrain charcoal from smudging. This flower has shades of light and dark black and gray. Shadows are cast along the flower as well. The technique used to determine how light or dark the charcoal appears is based off of how much pressure the hand uses while it is bearing down on the paper. If the charcoal is held like a pencil it can create thinner lines. Thicker and bolder lines can be made by holding the charcoal on its side. …show more content…

Liquid media uses either a pen or a brush to apply the ink. During the Renaissance, many of these pieces of art were made with iron-gall ink. This ink was made from an acid found on the swelling on an oak tree, which was called a nutgall, and was mixed with iron salts. Elisabetta Sirani used a quill pen and ink, along with a little bit of black chalk to make this picture. The ink better shows the shadows with more fluidity as opposed to chalk, or charcoal, or any other dry media. Shadows are cast on the faces of the people in this artwork. There is a man sitting in the back behind a woman hold a baby. The baby is reaching out towards another man who is kneeling beside the woman. The kneeling man represents the

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