Peter Bruegel Children's Games

1595 Words4 Pages

Art is only to the extent of our human imagination, meaning that it is an everlasting fountain of creativity. Many great artists in the past have been known to make contributions that affect the art world even to this day. The reason these artists are known because of their paintings which are still preserved for the viewing of future generations. One of these widely famous pieces of paintings is called Children’s Games (card number 18), which was painted in 1560 by the European painter Peter Bruegel the Elder. Taking a glance at this beautiful painting, the most eye catching things seen would be the numerous amount of people in dynamic action as well as the large stone building in the foreground. These people seem to be doing many things, …show more content…

One technique this painting utilizes is the technique of overlapping images to give a sense of depth to the viewer. An example of overlapping is how the wall of the building on the left of the foreground clearly overlaps the red fence near it. Likewise, another example of overlapping would be the trees in the top left corner blocking the homes of the people even further to the top left corner of the painting. These two uses of overlapping demonstrate a feeling of depth as it shows, like in real life, if one object is in front of another object, the object in front would cover the object in the back. Like overlapping, the painter also uses size to give a sense of realism. The use of size to give depth could be seen by the people in the painting because of people closer to the bottom of the painting are clearly larger than the people on the top side of the painting. Another use of size could be seen by the buildings since the building in the top center is larger than the buildings behind it. The building and the people's size give the illusion that the ones in the front are closer than the ones in the back. This is because the closer an object is to the viewer, the larger it is. Therefore, the buildings and people’s difference in size show that there are some of the buildings and people that are close to the audience and some that are farther away from the audience. Another …show more content…

The use of overlapping the trees over the houses lets you know that the trees are first. The size of people in the front compared to the people in the back show you there are differences the farther away the object is. The placement of the buildings show that the more higher the buildings are on the picture plane, the farther away it is. Likewise, the closer the people are, the more detail they express on themselves. The farther the grass is, the more diluted it is. At one point, the building edges all converge to one point if drawn out showing depth in the painting. The masterfulness of the techniques that were used here could only be done by an expert. The overlapping was done really well. The size of the homes on the top right corner really showed the distance each was from the viewer. Every single of the numerous amount of people are detailed showing that the artist cared about his work. The artist also showed by the color that the farther away the object was, the more diluted the color. I liked that the artist used one vanishing point, however, I think that the painting would look much cooler if another vanishing point was used at the top left corner more prominently with the trees and river and such. It could be done more differently to show that the river was going one point and the town was going to another point

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