Analysis/Reviews

Possessions Painting Analysis

I chose to paint three objects relative to dance for this piece, since I figured combining two of my favorite things, dance and art, would be interesting. I chose an older pair of pointe shoes and, originally, a small wooden sculpture of a dancer, which I replaced later on in the painting with an Ace bandage. I was nervous to start this still-life because it was in color, so I set aside a lot of time to be sure that I mixed everything to match as closely as I could get it. The point shoes, which I wanted to be the focal point of the painting, are a soft, yellow-ish pink color. To achieve the base color of the shoes, I mixed burnt sienna and white at about a six-level, then added a little cooling violet, raw sienna, and hansa yellow. For the darker values in the shoes, I mixed my ballet-slipper-pink color with yellow ochre and raw umber. I remembered a mistake that I had made in my previous painting before I started painting the highlights of the shoes; for the highlights in the cloth we painted, I used white directly out of the tube, creating a “pasty” and unnatural light. Instead of making the same mistake twice, I mixed my ballet-slipper-pink with white at about an eight-level, then added a little more hansa yellow.  The inside of the shoe was very shadowed, making it appear much darker than the pink on the outside of the shoes. For the bits of the inside of the shoe that were visible, I mixed ultramarine blue and burnt sienna to make a black color, then added a little napthol scarlet to give it a little bit of a purple tint.

            When it came time to start painting the sculpture of the dancer, I couldn’t get it to work out for me. I found it difficult to match the colors, but more so I found it difficult to paint the figure itself. The proportions weren’t making sense, and after about two hours of wiping-off and re-painting, I decided to replace it for the sake of the success of the painting, and for the sake of my sanity. I chose the Ace bandage because I liked how the cream-color complimented the pink ballet shoes without over-powering them. I pulled out a little bit of the roll to create a triangle shape to match the triangle shape created by the placement of the ballet shoes and their laces, and also to create more folds. I used similar mixtures for the shadows and highlights in the Ace bandage as I did in the pointe shoes, but for the base color I used hansa yellow, yellow ochre, and white.

            I placed a white pillowcase over the crate I set the objects up on, and for that I did not use white directly from the tube either. I mixed white, raw umber, and a little ultramarine blue to create the shades in the fabric, and used white and a little hansa yellow to build lighter values as I worked through the planes in the folds.  I let a little bit of the crate peak through in the upper left corner of the setup. To match the colors in the crate, I used yellow ochre, white, and a little raw sienna. I pulled some of the background color in for the dark spots on the wood. The background is a mix of Rembrant brown and sap green, creating a dark, olive-green color. I chose this as the background shade because I prefer darker backgrounds and felt that it would best compliment the pink color, which is a derivative of red, and the cream color in the Ace bandage.

            I feel like my greatest success in this painting is the ballet shoes. I wanted the shoes to be the focal point of the painting, so I made sure the detail in them was greater than the detail in the other aspects of the painting, which is a Chardin used that I liked. I also liked that he very subtly “outlined” the parts of the painting he wanted his viewer to focus on, so I did the same with the pointe shoes. I tried to vary my brush strokes in this painting as well, since in my last in-class fabric study my brush strokes were very short and there weren’t many smooth drags. I made a few rookie mistakes while I was painting. I didn’t think of the picture as a whole, but instead worked on individual sections. I also didn’t lay my background down first, so the objects don’t really look soft as I would like them to against it. In my next painting, I’ll try to be more aware of the painting as a whole and move around it instead of fixing myself on one spot at a time. I’ll also try to work more back-to-front and lay down a background color before I start getting too into the foreground of the painting. 

 

 

                    Transcending Descriptive Realism Final Painting Process and Self-Evaluation

Developing this painting was especially hard for me, but also very enjoyable. All semester long, I’ve been trying to get as close to realism as possible. I’ve focused on paying close attention to detail, tried to mix perfectly matched colors, made sure my sketches were as accurate as I could get them. But, for this painting, I had to let go of that and branch out a little bit. 

Little did I know that my History of Western Art class would coincide so nicely with my painting class this semester. When we were given the assignment to further study Kandinsky for our final painting, we reviewed his works in my art history class the very next day. What I found most interesting about Kandinsky was that he developed into an expressive abstract artist. His paintings had the qualities of your classic abstract paintings; forms broken down into their most basic shapes and colors. However, Kandinsky started breaking down the forms so much that they began to be barely recognizable, and then his paintings started meshing together, eventually just becoming groups of colors. Kandinsky used to turn on music and just paint, his end result had nothing behind it, and that allowed whoever was viewing it to interpret it as they saw fit. I knew expressive abstract wasn’t the direction I could take the entire painting in, since we had to clearly show specific objects, so I tried to incorporate the style inside of the objects. The way they’re filled in is relatively random, with the only real conscious decision being color placement. I didn’t get as colorful as Kandinsky may have, but I wanted to keep a little bit of my own uniformity in the painting as well, so my own style still came through. I tried to make a clear Kandinsky reference in the eye closest to the light on the portrait in the painting. Kandinsky is very famous for his Circles, and I figured the eye in a portrait would be a great place to pull in some inspiration from that piece.

Another artist that inspired my final piece is one of my favorites, Pablo Picasso. Picasso, like Kandinsky, was an abstract artist, eventually labeled as a Cubist, which is an artistic classification that he developed himself. One of my favorite pieces by Picasso is Girl Before a Mirror, which he painted in the 1930s. The painting is of his then-mistress Marie-Therese Walter gazing at her reflection in a mirror she’s holding in front of her. Her face is divided in half to show two different points of view; the side of her face and the front, and both sides are painted in different colors. I tried to incorporate this in the portrait in my own painting. I chose cool colors for the left side of the face, and warm colors on the right side, closer to the light. Picasso also uses thick black lines to “outline” the forms in Girl Before a Mirror, so I did the same in my painting. I was hesitant to do this because in class we were always told not to create an outline around a form, and that there were no such thing as “edges,” just the end of a form. I decided to break a few rules and use the black outline, and I was happy with the way it turned out.

Even though stepping out of my comfort zone was hard, this painting was still very enjoyable. It was fun to be able to use a lot of vibrant colors and to be very lose with my brush strokes. However, the reason I liked this assignment the most is because an abstract painting originally sparked my interest in art. My older sister had a poster of Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror hanging in her room, placed so that it was the first thing you saw when you opened her door. It was a large poster, and the vibrant colors and patterns beautifully contrasted with the stark-white wall she hung it on. Every time I walked into her room, I would awe over the painting. I credit that poster of Girl Before a Mirror with being the first thing that sparked my artistic interest. I’m forever grateful for that poster, and foremost, the painting itself. Without the intriguing nature of the image, I don’t know if I would have ever truly found my passion for art and everything that goes into creating it, and actually trying to create a piece along the lines of what Picasso did made me appreciate it even more. For this being the first abstract painting I’ve ever intentionally done, I don’t think I did a bad job. I’d like to try to clean up my paint application a bit more in the next one, I feel like it looks a bit muddy. I might try layering colors on top of dry layers so that the paint doesn’t blend as much next time. I think educating myself a bit more on the process of abstract painters would be beneficial to my own exploration of abstract art.

 

The Lovers

            This piece is a Rene Magritte oil painting, currently residing in the MoMA, titled The Lovers. Magritte is most respected for his strides in the age of Surrealism. I am a huge Magritte fan, I love the wit behind his pieces, especially in This is Not a Pipe, but The Lovers is without-a-doubt my favorite Magritte, and quite possibly my favorite painting in general. The piece depicts what the viewer can assume to be a man and a woman kissing in what appears to be the corner of a room, while wearing some kind of fabric over their faces to hide their identity. The painting can easily be recognized as a great example of 2D design because of all the elements and principles it incorporates, such as line, texture and proportion. However, what stands out to me the most in the piece is Magritte’s use of color. The entire color scheme of the painting is very dulled and deep, giving the painting a kind of melancholy, dark, quieted mood, plus, if you compare the colors used in the clothing of who we can assume to be “the lovers” with the colors used on the walls surrounding them, you realize that they match, almost like they’re camouflaged. Not only do they match, but Magritte balanced the colors so that the color on the wall matched the color of the clothing piece directly across from it. Magritte also emphasizes the color red, which some parallel with love and lust, but also with the likes of the devil, which goes hand-in-hand with sin. Magritte’s use of color as well as elements and principles all combine to tell the story of the piece, which I tell as two individuals in an adulterous relationship. The scandal and secretiveness depicted in the piece make it one of my favorites, maybe because one of my favorite shows is Cheaters. However, I’ve heard some look at this painting and see it as a depiction of something along the lines of Romeo and Juliet, forbidden lovers whose relationship would be so unaccepted that they need to hide it. Regardless, this is one of Magritte’s most notable paintings and one that has certainly won my undying love and appreciation.

Renoir’s “Dance Sequence”

Referred to as the “Dance Sequence,” Renoir’s paintings Dance at Bougival, Dance in the City, and Dance in the Country especially caught my eye in Sophie Monneret’s book, Renoir. It is assumed that Durand-Ruel, a French art dealer, ordered the paintings from Renoir. In all three of the paintings, the man is Paul Lhote, an ex-naval officer and a loyal friend to Renoir. Lhote was passionate about painting, and apparently also passionate about the women he posed with. It was rumored that he always fell in love with his female counterparts, but he posed “patiently and elegantly.” The women in the sequence were not all painted from the same model. In Dance In the City, Renoir’s mistress Aline posed with “slightly rustic vitality” which was “perfect for the subject.” In Dance in the City and Dance at the Bougival, Renoir used Marie-Clementine, who had posed for Puvis de Chavannes and was recommended by him as a model for Renoir. Marie-Clementine, like Lhote, was passionate about painting and eventually established herself as a famous painter under the name of Suzanne Valadon. In the sequence, Renoir captures the difference between the worlds through the “clothes and attitudes of the models, and their way of dancing.” In the paintings, atmosphere is conveyed, but in a very simplistic manner. The dancers are not accompanied by a massive crowd, but rather are surrounded by “a few rapidly sketched figures” or “an impersonal background.”

            Personally, I connect with this sequence because I have a passion for dance. I performed for fourteen years, ten of which were in competitive dance. Because I am an official high-school graduate, I can no longer dance competitively with my studio, so I now teach classes throughout the week. Dance has always been a huge part of my life, so anything to do with the art always sparks my interest. I love how Renoir captured the different mannerisms of the contrasting worlds through something they all have in common. I love that the paintings themselves are so simple compared to some of his other pieces, like Luncheon of the Boating Party, yet they are still incredibly compelling. The color choices, detail in the fabric of the women’s dresses, the varying textures, and the way he captured movement are all aspects of the sequence that really draw me in.  Overall, Renoir’s “Dance Sequence” is a series of paintings that I am very happy to have come across and holds my upmost respect and admiration.

 

George Caleb Bingham and Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap

 

For this assignment, I spent a lot of time looking through artists on the list whose names held no recognition for me. George Caleb Bingham was one of the first names I clicked on to read more about, and after reading his description, I immediately chose to write about him. His short biography really drew me in, mainly because I found there some similarities between Bingham and I. By similarities, I do not mean that we went to the same school, or even that we paint the same way, but that part of the path Bingham followed is what I’d like to see from myself. Bingham’s artistic talents grew rapidly; he studied for a few months at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, then traveled to Europe and around the United States. Throughout this period of time, Bingham’s talents dramatically improved to such a point that his work was almost unrecognizable. Unfortunately, Bingham later decided to study at Dusseldorf, a school a number of other American artists chose to study at, and lost his style after adopting a dry academic technique, then changed his direction completely and moved into the world of politics. What I would like to have in common with Bingham is his degree of improvement and his development of personal style. I am not interested in people looking at my work and finding someone else who does things just like I do. I do not want to be a carbon copy of the academic world. Rather, I would like to develop a definitive style.  

            From his paintings, I took most interest in Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap. What I liked the most about this piece was the development of the focal point. I like how there is no guessing what the focal point of the image is; Bingham clearly wanted the group of people and animals traveling to be the first place the viewer’s eyes go to. He makes this apparent by placing the group slightly off-center and having the light source fall directly on them, brightening up their part of the image, while having their surroundings almost silhouetted in the dark. He also draws a lot of attention to the group through his use of detail; the detail in the focal point is very carefully done, while the areas surrounding the group are much less thorough.

 

                                                Second Position Banner Design Analysis

I kept all of the backgrounds in the Second Position banners white while using a black and white image or black text with a pop color to emphasize the central selling point of the banner. For example, in the banners with the images, the background remains white with a black and white image and the dancewear item is the only piece of the image that is in color. In the banners with the words, the selling point of the phrase is in color, like the word “affordable.” The banners are also all tied-together with the Second Position logo, either in the color of the item being emphasized, or in the original hot pink color. The banners also all have a black button that reads “SHOP” in white lettering, all the same font.

 I implemented emphasis by contrasting the black and white in the majority of the image with the pink color of the shoe. I included repetition by repeating the color of the shoes in the logo. I created balance by aligning the “SHOP” button and the logo on the right side, and keeping the image on the left. I intended that the image flow from the shoe and the logo to first emphasize what was being sold and the brand selling it, then up to the “SHOP” button so that the viewer could shop the brand.