Beautiful Birds
Throughout the history of art, birds have appeared in many different masterpieces. The birds may not be the same species and they may not live in the same habitat, but the works of art still offer unbelievable amounts of resemblance. Dabbling Ducks is a painting created by Ricky Montilla that depicts two ducks in their natural environment. Doves and Olive Branch was created by Steve Simon and it illustrates three doves flying in the sky. Swan Lake was painted by Terrece Beesley and it portrays a swan floating in a lake. The Height of Freedom was produced by Randy McGovern and it shows an eagle soaring through the sky. These images all depict birds in their natural habitats and allow the viewer to experience nature’s profound
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beauty by looking at extraordinary pictures. As you look at the images, keeping your mind open, picking up on things that may not be obvious, and noticing the similarities and differences between them will enhance your viewing experience. The medium used to create a masterpiece can make a piece of artwork extremely powerful.
For three of the selected images, the artists used oil paint on a canvas to display their beautiful creations. Dabbling Ducks was created with oil paint on a canvas that was twenty-one inches wide and twelve inches tall (Montilla). Doves and Olive Branch was also created with oil paint on a canvas using seven different colors (Simon). The Height of Freedom was originally created using oil paint on a canvas seventeen and a half inches wide and twenty-three and an eighth inches tall, now having a limited edition of 1,500 signed and numbered replicas (McGovern). The final image, Swan Lake, was made with watercolor on cold-pressed paper using only three different pigments …show more content…
(Beesley). As with other kinds of fine arts, symbols play a large role in the influence that the artwork provides for the viewers. In every image, many aspects of the background add meaning that enhance the enjoyment of the artwork. Trees appear in each image, symbolizing freedom, growth, and the natural aging process. The mountains and hills, found in Doves and Olive Branch and The Height of Freedom, symbolize potential, continuity, and a test of strength. The water represents peace, comfort, cleansing, and movement in Dabbling Ducks and Swan Lake. The focal point in each image, the birds, contribute specific symbolism to the piece that add a large amount of meaning. The ducks in Dabbling Ducks symbolize innocence, freedom, and beauty. The doves in Doves and Olive Branch symbolize peace, unity, and love. The olive branch in Doves and Olive Branch is another important symbol to notice because it helps the doves enforce the idea of peace. The swan in Swan Lake symbolizes purity, grace, and love. The eagle in The Height of Freedom symbolizes freedom, power, wisdom, and courage. Color schemes also contribute a large amount of detail to artwork. The palette used in the chosen images tend to include more secondary colors and intermediate colors than they do primary colors. In each masterpiece, cool colors are used to depict many different things. Dabbling Ducks and Swan Lake contain various tints of blue and green to create the tree leaves and the water. The trees in Doves and Olive Branch and The Height of Freedom are characterized by multiple shades of green. Dabbling Ducks also contains darker shades of numerous cool colors on the body of the ducks. Doves and Olive Branch portrays multiple tints of cool colors on the core of the doves and a few shades of cool colors, such as green and violet, on the olive branch. Swan Lake illustrates shades of several cool colors on the banks of the lake and at the base of the trees. The Height of Freedom shows many tints of cool colors in the sky and in the clouds. Warm colors are also used in this selection of images to allow pigment to be applied to different things. The beaks and legs, where visible in the images, portray tints of warm colors in each of the artworks. The reflections on the water in Dabbling Ducks and Swan Lake show tinted warm colors of yellow-orange, red-orange, and red-violet. The log in Dabbling Ducks depicts various shades of warm colors. The sunset in Doves and Olive Branch shows a multitude of warm color tints. In Swan Lake, many tints of warm colors are depicted in the colorful leaves and the body of the swan. The Height of Freedom portrays assorted tints of warm colors on the head of the eagle, the tail feathers of the eagle, and the snowy part of the mountains. It also shows shades of warm colors on the parts of the mountain that do not contain snow, the core of the eagle, and the wings of the eagle. Along with color, the sizes of different elements in the piece can be important in the interpretation of the artwork. When an artist designs a piece of art, one of the major decisions they have to make is the proportion at which to make each component. In some pieces of art, they choose to have the focal point be a small proportion of the whole image. The ducks in Dabbling Ducks and the swan in Swan Lake both represent a small part of the complete image. On the other hand, some artists decide to have the focal point of the image be a large proportion of the completed piece. The doves in Doves and Olive Branch and the eagle in The Height of Freedom represent a large percentage of the image as a whole. The sizes of objects throughout the image and where they are placed affects the way that the viewer understands the artwork.
The differing types of space in each image help the viewer observe the masterpiece from the view intended by the artist. Dabbling Ducks has a limited amount of area surrounding the ducks, however you can still decipher from the environment that they are near the side of a river or stream because there is a reflection of the bank near the edges of the painting. Doves and Olive Branch shows linear perspective when looking at the trees and hills in the background because as the hills recede from the sun, the trees get less and less detailed until they reach the vanishing point where you can no longer see individual trees on the hills. Swan Lake also shows linear perspective when looking at the content behind the swan because as you go farther down the lake, the water and the surrounding trees and rocks diminish until they reach the vanishing point of blue. The Height of Freedom exhibits atmospheric perspective because the eagle is larger and more detailed on the painting, showing it is closer than the background, which is smaller and less
detailed. The varying forms of content allow the viewer to determine what they believe is the figure and what they view as the ground. The birds in each picture are representing the positive shapes. Doves and Olive Branch is the only image that has an additional positive shape, which is the olive branch. The negative shapes vary between the pictures, mainly because each bird has a different natural habitat. Sometimes a rhythm occurs within the negative shapes. In Dabbling Ducks, the negative shapes include the grasses, the leaves, the log, and the water. The hills, the trees covering the hills, and the sunset are representing the negative shapes in Doves and Olive Branch, with the hills depicting a rhythm of repeating shapes. The negative shapes in Swan Lake are hard to identify because they are so brightly colored, but they include the trees, the bank of the lake, and the water. The Height of Freedom has many negative shapes such as the rhythm of the mountains, the trees, the river, the sky, and the clouds. The Height of Freedom also has hidden faces of five famous Americans that are concealed within the negative shapes (McGovern). Since these pieces are based in the outdoors, emphasis can be on the birds while subordination can be on the surroundings. The birds and their environments appear to be real and look like they belong where they are depicted, implying that the images are naturalistic. Dabbling Ducks shows the ducks close to the side of a river or stream, which is an area where they are commonly noticed. Doves and Olive Branch shows the doves flying above a beautiful hill covered region. The swan in Swan Lake is moving through a zone of colorful flowers near the edge of a lake. The eagle in The Height of Freedom is soaring above a mountainous area. Birds naturally move, so it is important to depict that characteristic in the artwork. The images of the birds contain lines that imply movement, usually causing the bird to transcend from the context in which it appears. The diagonal lines around the ducks in Dabbling Ducks show that they must be moving, not sitting completely still on the log. The rays of sunlight across the hills in Doves and Olive Branch provide a reference for the curved lines of the doves’ wings, signifying that the doves are flying. In Swan Lake, the rippled lines that appear around the swan in the otherwise calm water signify that the swan is moving forward. The vertical lines across the mountains and the horizontal lines across the trees in The Height of Freedom help the viewer distinguish that the eagle is progressing forward. Enjoyment of artwork can vary based on how much you analyze the images and the content included within them. When you first look at the images that were discussed throughout this piece, one of the first things you may have noticed was that each one contained some kind of bird. After thorough inspection, you may have observed that the colors, mediums, spacing, and other characteristics were more similar than you previously thought. Although there are many similarities, the slight differences are what make each masterpiece unique. Using careful examination, you can enhance your artistic viewing experience and expand your interpretations of any art pieces you encounter. Ricky Montilla. Dabbling Ducks. Oil paint on canvas. December 26, 2014. Steve Simon. Doves and Olive Branch. Oil paint on canvas. April 16, 2012. Terrece Beesley. Swan Lake. Watercolor on cold-pressed paper. December 16, 2015. Randy McGovern. The Height of Freedom. Oil paint on canvas. 2012. Works Cited Beesley, Terrece. "Swan Lake." The Theme Foundry, 16 Dec. 2015. Web. 27 Feb. 2017. . Getlein, Mark. Living with Art. 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2013. Print. McGovern, Randy. "The Height of Freedom." Eagle Prints by Wildlife Artist Randy McGovern. McGovern Wildlife Art Collection, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2017. . Montilla, Ricky. "Dabbling Ducks." Absolute Arts. World Wide Arts Resources Corporation, 26 Dec. 2014. Web. 27 Feb. 2017. . Simon, Steve. "Doves and Olive Branch." Fine Art America. N.p., 16 Apr. 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2017. .
The texture of the paint is smooth and flows very nicely the paintings composition is primarily bundled into the bottom right half of the image. The wings and legs of the animals as well as and table help form an invisible sloping line across the painting.
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
A small child views a painting, giggling to his mother how it looks like an elephant soaring throughout the galaxy. An hour later a middle age man views the exact painting only to acknowledge the abstract painting as a collage of miscellaneous shapes and colors. This view is much like the comparison between John James Auburn and Annie Dillard passages, revealing opposite and similar aspects on the subject of birds.
...hese repeated vertical lines contrast firmly with a horizontal line that divides the canvas almost exactly in half. The background, upper portion of the canvas, seems unchanging and flat, whereas the foreground and middle ground of the painting have a lot of depth to them.
Rowland, Beryl. Birds With Human Souls, A Guide to Bird Symbolism. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1978.
She has been placed in the foreground and is more detailed than the background. In the middle ground there are trees and in the background a small town can be seen. There is the illusion that the child is in a room and looking out at the snowy town. There is the illusion that there is a window between the outside and the central figure. In the painting the girl is painted in the center to highlight that she is the main focus. She also encompasses most of the canvas. Berthe Morisot painted the girl as the largest figure to show she was the central focus. There is illusion of space, if this painting was bigger it would be like the viewer was standing behind the girl watching her look outside at the snowy landscape. The viewer would feel like they are in a room that is not completely shown in the
Eric Fishl’s Scarsdale is a painting that is done on three canvases. When placed together, they appear to make one whole picture. The focal point of the painting is the woman, dressed in a white gown and veil. It appears that she is wearing a wedding dress, since the dress is white and includes a veil. To the left is a cat and to the right is a dog. The woman represents the focal point, not only because she is the largest figure in the painting, but also because everything else is slightly in darkness. Fischl’s cat and dog can only be made out if one looks at the painting carefully. Fischl also paints the woman so that she almost appears to be floating in air. One can see that she is sitting on a chair, but the dog is directly under her, and he does not really use perspective to make it clear that the woman is not floating in midair.
... study for the overall concept they appear rather as abstract patterns. The shadows of the figures were very carefully modeled. The light- dark contrasts of the shadows make them seem actually real. The spatial quality is only established through the relations between the sizes of the objects. The painting is not based on a geometrical, box like space. The perspective centre is on the right, despite the fact that the composition is laid in rows parallel to the picture frame. At the same time a paradoxical foreshortening from right to left is evident. The girl fishing with the orange dress and her mother are on the same level, that is, actually at equal distance. In its spatial contruction, the painting is also a successful construction, the groups of people sitting in the shade, and who should really be seen from above, are all shown directly from the side. The ideal eye level would actually be on different horizontal lines; first at head height of the standing figures, then of those seated. Seurats methods of combing observations which he collected over two years, corresponds, in its self invented techniques, to a modern lifelike painting rather than an academic history painting.
Atmospheric perspective is where “forms which are far in the distance lose their clarity and sharpness due to dust and moisture in the atmosphere” (Notes). In “The Death of Socrates” the women in the back ground are examples of atmospheric perspective. Even though you can tell they are women they are not clear like the men that are in the painting. In “The Death of Sardanapalus” the figure that are in the dark near the bed in also an example of atmospheric perspective. Even though they have common characteristics there are differences too. A difference between the two painting is that in “The Death of Socrates” painting there is a foreground, middle ground and background, but in “The Death of Sardanapalus” painting it is tipped up towards the viewer because of the use of dramatic
The images related to birds are the major symbolic images in the narrative from the very beginning of the novel:
...thin this painting is appealing to the eye. With regards to linear perspective, this painting has a diagonal in which the figures line up and converge to one point.
This piece of art is done in watercolor, which crafts a wonderful blend of colors that creates a visual
... perspective with the soldiers and the building. The soldiers in the foreground are much larger compared to the building and soldiers in the background. Perspective is achieved by the size differences between close up objects and far away ones like the horses. The foreshortening is used by the artist in the soldier's arm pointing the viewer into the painting. All eyes above are directed down to the battle field. Lastly, I was drawn to the painting The Battle between Christians and Moors at El Sotillo by Francisco de Zurbarán (1648) due to a lot of emotion and drama unfolding before my eyes. I could see a story with a compelling narrative as I looked at the painting. Indeed, I probably spent most of my time at the museum on this piece of art. The painting had an interesting back story and a lot of action which made for a satisfying viewing and analytical experience.
Mafia baby is an image with a scowling baby dressed in a tuxedo with a bow-tie pointing to the ground. The captions typically portray the baby as an infant version of The Godfather. The image was originally posted on Reddit in 2011. The baby also has been Photoshop in the classic godfather scenes. It became popular in 2012 and rose up to fame due to the movie Godfather and other old time mafia culture. It plays off that ole school gangster vibe. A tuff or thug but dressed in a nice tux giving it that ole time feel, back when everyone dressed formal all the time. That the image also shows the baby with little to no hair, that adds to the classic look of a mafia icon. They also take famous quotes from the godfather and use it in the terms of a baby. Like “grab my nemo blanket…because tonight he is sleeping with the fishies”. Or “humpty was the rat….make it look like an accident”. These are spoofs or parodies of quotes off the movie Godfather. I feel that my creation of the fits in with the family of memes that surround this image.
... the reader understand the meaning that is behind it, like so “the poem concludes by asking rhetorically whether its listeners now understand the truths produced by both birds and poetry” (SparkNotes Editors). Besides nature being compared from birds a deeper meaning is behind this symbol and this is “art produces soothing, truthful sounds” (SparkNotes Editors) just like the soothing sounds from a bird that anyone can enjoy.