Starting Shape,Value,and Texture

Finished "Fire and Water" panel

On the roof of the Met

Sculpture garden

Fancy

Met Museum Homework

      The two paintings I am comparing are Study Head of a Young Woman by Anthony van Dyck, and The Lute Player by Caravaggio. Both pieces are oil paintings of young women. In The Lute Player, there is an emphasis  on the instruments. The bright colors of them stand out boldly against the black background. Gesture  is used within the folds of the woman’s clothes, guiding your eye around the fabric. Naturalism is also noted, because while the painting is two-dimensional, it is so realistic that it gives the impression that it is three-dimensional. All of the shapes of the instruments are positive shapes because they are clearly distinguished from the black background.

      In Study Head of a Young Woman, the figure is unbalanced in the center. Instead, the woman is facing towards the right of the canvas, her head not in the center. The dark background of this piece is somewhat blotted and distorted.  The shape of the woman’s face is defined by the color and value changes to define the edges. Both of these pieces are oil paintings, one on wood, the other on canvas. They both depict portraits of young women, created in bold colors that stand against a dark, black background.

Homework 3 (part 2)

http://catebrown18.blogspot.com/2011/05/spatial-puzzles-equivocal-space.html

This piece is a great example of equivocal space. This is due to the inability of being able to distinguish a separate foreground, middle ground, and background. It contains positive shapes because all of the balloons are distinguished from the background, and negative shapes because the shape of all of the balloons together is what distinguishes the background. The transparency used in this piece makes it unclear about whether or not there is a spatial pattern.

        All of the balloons are composed of curvilinear lines, while the strings of the balloons are strictly composed of rectilinear lines. Although it is unclear whether or not there are separate planes, depth is still present due to the overlapping of the balloons.