Art Analysis: Winter Blizzard By Ellen Wagener

939 Words2 Pages

The first piece I selected is Winter Blizzard by artist Ellen Wagener. It is a drawing created with pastel on mounted paper, and it was finished in 2006. This drawing stood out to me the most because of its details in the pastels and shows great craftsmanship. The artist really took advantage of blending the light and dark values to show contrast in the clouds to show more aggression. For example, Ellen chose to draw streaks on the bottom right side and the middle instead of using a swirl technique. She also chose to draw the shards of ice as if they’re flying at a fast pace rather than single snowflakes. I feel these types of examples were to show the aggression in the drawing and how heavy a storm can be. This drawing represents Iowa really well because if it’s harsh hitting winter storms. It also shows how gloomy the days can be when those types of storms hit. Ellen Wagener uses the dark effect in two ways. One is in the sky and how it shows the incoming clouds and how drastic the storm may be. The other way is the shadows in different shades of gray and angles behind the snow waves. They show how the depth in the snow front is closer or further back from the other waves. As an artist, I rarely draw in pastels so the techniques rarely come natural to me. I primarily work in graphite, colored pencil, and acrylic paint. If I were to …show more content…

In this particular painting he uses color matching and the right use of tones from the sky down to the body of water. The darkness in the clouds matches the colors of the rest of the painting just right rather than exaggerating the light differences. His use of shadows and highlights work well together. The shadows work well in the wings of the ducks and in between the weeds. The highlights show well with the white caps in the water, the duck bellies that bounce off the water, and the right side of the tree to show light

Open Document