Payton Baier
At first glance, in Grant Wood’s Stone City you see a wide variety of visual elements. As you look longer you see the pieces come into focus. The eight terms that help me analyze the visual experience of Wood’s painting are line, shape, mass, light, value, color, texture, and space. This picture is in landscape view, and is three-dimensional.
You see implied lines that transition one thing into another thing such as roads, one hill to another hill, a bridge, and you’ll see the actual lines for a house. Some of the implied lines have curves that lead into windy roads that take you off into a distance with trees. You’ll find an abundance of shapes like ovals that form into a tree, little tiny circles that form little circular bushes
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Implied light is used because Wood implies that there is a light source outside of the natural world. In Wood’s painting there is a light source coming from the left. Overall, a great source of light is shining over the valley and illuminates the rolling hills, but in the foreground the light is blocked so darker, heavier shadows are used. This helps to show a variety of different values in the painting. Trees are a primarily dominant source of shadows in the painting and in some places a stark contrast in value exist between grass that has a shadow cast onto it and grass that does not. Another example of how Wood used light in his painting is through the use of chiaroscuro. In the hills there is gradation where the light shines and you are able to see the shadow on the backside of the hill. Wood uses a contrast of lights and darks to implore that shadows are being used in the painting. The use of chiaroscuro is especially important for the painting because he is trying to create an element of a heavy light source causing great shadows, but rounded objects such as trees and hills do not have a clear cut line where a shadow is cast. Instead gradation creates a gradual increase of …show more content…
It is important for things to be in perspective to one another like in the way that Wood has done. He uses a vanishing point in his painting for perspective. The point is where the road meets the horizon. From his painting it is clear to see where the perspective lines appear because of the rows of vegetation. The trees in the background are in a line curving over the hill and then in the foreground rows of crops show the perspective lines. Even though those examples are the easiest ones to spot and follow, lines in the buildings, the roads, and even the rolling hills, follow the perspective to make sure they look
The house is surrounded by green grass which makes the image more realistic and the trees in the background and the tree in the foreground create a sense of depth. The image is quite well spaced out, due to a vast amount of area situated between objects. There is a visual equality in the symmetrical image. There is a contrast between the colours of the image to draw attention to the house. The image looks to be taken in the dusk of the afternoon, where there is not much natural light, which creates a darker tone. The main emphasis of the image is the house, which seems to be quite different when the image is first seen by a viewer. The texture helps emphasize the main focal point seeing though it is quite smooth, the colour also creates a mood towards the image and atmosphere in the image. The line helps develop structure due to the tone being a medium darkness. In some places (the area surrounding the house) is a degree lighter and shadows are present to help form the line throughout this part of the
The focal point of being the mother and appear to be true to size. In comparison, the apple, the trees and landscape in the in the distance are all represented to be true to size based on this perspective. The women being bare foot along with the child who is naked provides unity to painting as they are part of the natural landscape. All of this, gives the viewer the impression that this is a realistic picture.
Starting with visual elements I saw lines, implied depth, and texture. I see lines by him using lines created by an edge. Each line is curved not straight but it works with the piece. By using this he creates the piece to make it whole. He uses many curved lines within the painting I don’t know if there is a straight line in the whole thing. The next element I saw was implied depth. Using linear perspective you can see the mountains but they look smaller than the rest of the piece. They are the vanishing point in the back making it look as if you can walk down and they will get closer and closer to you. The last element that I saw was texture. They talk about Van Gogh’s painting, The Starry Night having texture through a two- dimensional surface, in which this painting has that similar feel. Van Gogh uses thick brush stokes on his paintings to show his feelings. There is actually a name for this called, Impasto,
There is a lot of repetition of the vertical lines of the forest in the background of the painting, these vertical lines draw the eye up into the clouds and the sky. These repeated vertical lines contrast harshly with a horizontal line that divides the canvas almost exactly in half. The background, upper portion of the canvas, is quite static and flat, whereas the foreground and middle ground of the painting have quite a lot of depth. This static effect is made up for in the immaculate amount of d...
... 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.
There is, however, a slight opposition to this intense realism. It can be seen in Wood’s representation of foliage. The trees that appear in the upper left corner look like large green lollipops peeking over the roof of the house. The viewer knows that trees do not naturally look like that. Wood has depicted them as stylized and modern, similar to the trees seen is Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the island of La Grand Jatte. After viewing other works by Wood, it is clear that he has adopted this representation for the trees in many of his paintings.
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
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
Sayre, H. M. (2010). A World of Art: Sixth Edition. In H. M. Sayre, A World of Art: Sixth Edition (pp. 511, 134, 29, 135, 152, 313-314, 132). Lake St., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.,.
For example, he uses texture, color and organic forms to make the landscape look as real as possible. Most of the shapes are formed by shifts in colors and line because the canvas are two-dimensional. The viewer can observe that the painting is dominated by greys, browns, ochers, and other natural colors such as green and yellow to give the scene a more nature-like look. All the components and objects painted in this piece appear to have the same texture and color as the ones found in real life, such as rocks suggesting a rough hard texture and clouds being soft, which probably means that Vernet took in consideration real landscapes and places he might have seen in real life. While using different shades of grey, and painting dark clouds, Vernet was able to convince that a storm was approaching but he also decided to add source of light coming from the upper left corner by using a golden yellow color to create a sense of warmth, which creates a nice contrast between the light and the coldness from the overall shadows that seem to dominate the artwork, creating variety; however, the repetition of colors such as greys gave the whole piece a sense of unity and they also express the shadows of a stormy day. We
... the sense of sight has been incorporated into depicting the story behind what is denoted between the traditions, social orders and situations during the period the images were produced.
...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.
Perspective is like a sly fox. One view may look completely different than another view. For example, it’s amazing what the artist Julian Beever can do. He creates art on sidewalks using perspective, shadows, colors, and special line techniques. As stated in the article Pavement Chalk Art, “Beever’s drawings focus on the sudden collision of perception and reality” (91). One of Beevers many amazing artworks is a picture of a man falling down a subway tunnel. From one view, it looks like the man is falling, from the other it looks like the same thing except through a funhouse mirror, misshapen, odd. However, this does not only happen in art. We may look at a mess on the floor and immediately think that our annoying sibling made it, but that’s only what we see. There’s a whole other side to it, we just don't know yet.
...ct. Other lines form concentric circles converging with or emanating from a promontory. Other prints have formed “roads” like geometric plans and appear to have been occupied by large groups of the populations. Some of these lines can even be landing areas for planes or even spaceships. No one knows for sure.
When looking at an art piece such as a landscape oil painting by Albert Bierstadt—American artist who created Yosemite Valley. “In 1859, he traveled westward in the company of a land surveyor of the U.S. government, returning with sketches that would result in numerous finished paintings” (wikipedia). The artist shows incredible attention to detail throughout the landscape. The use of reflections is extremely effective and visually accurate; the reflections in the water—clarity of trees, shrubs, pebbles, and rocks—might be one of the most noticeable features in this piece. The relative brightness creates the warmth felt in this painting. The interposition as well as the allusion of three dimensions provides a high level of depth. Aerial perspective is correctly used, furnishing the effect of distortion—the...