Activity #10

Dempsey and Firpo by Geroge Bellows was a lithograph print. The printing process which creates a lithograph is different from other traditional methods. Most printing presses require the printmaker to etch an image or text into metal plates or physically carve out the image on blocks of wood or other soft material. To create a lithograph, no etching is required. The artist uses a set of greasy crayons or pencils to draw a mirrored image of the original artwork onto a smooth stone tablet. An oil-based variety of ink is applied directly to the plate and immediately bonds with the equally greasy crayon lines. Water is then wiped onto the remaining unpainted areas to discourage the ink from smearing. For multiple colors, a new plate had to be made, and inked. Because this print was monochromatic he only needed one, though there is a colored version of the painting that would require many plates. The textures throughout the print for the most part are very smooth especially for the skin of the people, but with a shading technique, Bellows makes things such as wrinkles in the shirts of the ref and the rough feel of the jackets some of the spectators have on very lifelike and realistic.

The Fall of Phaeton by Paul Rubens was a oil painting done on canvas. Unlike a water based paint, oil paint does not dry quickly as it doesn’t use evaporation to dry. This property allows the artist to mix or separate paint on the canvas without the paint drying or cracking in the process. This is very evident in this painting especially the way Rubens blends in the yellow streak of light with the other objects in the middle of the piece. Rubens started with a thin layer of blue and a thick brush and created his painting on top of that layer also with thin layers with exception of the main objects in the middle that have a thicker application of paint. Those objects were also painted with a much thinner brush than that of the 1^st layer.

Activity #8 Collage

Activity #9

Today we take them for granted, but art was changed forever by the inventions of paper and the camera. Paper took it from walls to make art portable. The camera taught us how to see. The advantages of paper are very obvious, but the effects on art by the camera are not so often considered as I didn’t notice the effect until now. Before the camera, the task of recording appearances and events through paint and sculpture such as one of the paintings I chose for my blogs, Dempsey vs Firpo. The rules of perspectives also changed as a photo was as close to reality as you could get whereas a painter is showing their view on things.
Daguerreotype, the first practical photographic process by Jacques Daguerre, that made a single permanent image directly on a copper plate. This impact of photographic prints was as a theoretical force behind the development of Impressionism and invariably Post Impressionism. If a camera could capture a fuzzy impression of a scene, why couldn't an artist do the same? As film speeds improved, time-lapse photography or chronophotography influenced Futurist and Cubist painting in the first decades of the twentieth century. The Dada movement often incorporated various images in a collage format to show a form of protest or disgust after World War I in a less traditional form of art. Today photography is a full fledged art form as there is a camera now at every event or occasion documenting it forever.

Activity #7

Nature, like still life’s, can be taken for granted by some, as it is just stuff some people see everyday depending on where they live. But for many nature in is a gateway to a completely different place with every brushstroke on the canvas highlighting not only the landscape but the animals that inhabit it. The desire to portray landscapes is been matched by the desire to create them as visual delights. Also like a still life, nature is not only a subject, but the material for art. But unlike still life’s that some my find unimaginative because of its realism, the ability to take transfer a colossal landscape to a canvas can be breathtaking. My exhibition showcase’s the art in nature theme from the dynamic landscape, the ferociousness of nature’s wildlife, to the quaint scene depicted by an artist.

Trail Riders by Thomas Benton, fixates your eyes immediately to a glorious mountain peak amongst the clouds that is lightly colored than the rest of the mountain to show its height and dominance compared to the much darker ridges cascaded below it. Your eyes are lead down toward a body of water vanishing into the bottom of the mountain. In front of the water is a symmetrical semicircle of pine trees that leads to the riders on horseback which follows the title. The scene in this painting is very serene and relaxing. Another piece in the exhibition is Niagara Falls from the American Side. This one is contrary to Trail Riders as William Bennett shows nature’s liveliness through the Niagara Falls. Though the emphasis is placed on the energetic moving water, towards the bottom of the artwork a group in a canoe calmly row towards the shore as if the powerful flow of water isn’t close to them at all. The next three paintings show nature and its wildlife. All three have the most focal weight in the middle of the picture and multiple animals. Charles Raleigh’s Law of the Wild shows exactly as the title says, the law of the wild that the hunter kills the hunted as a sea lion is caught by a polar bear. The textures throughout the painting are very smooth. It’s almost as if the smirk-like grin on the polar bear shows it knows the sea lion has no chance to escape on the smooth, slippery ice. D.G. Stouter’s On Point and Right and Left by Winslow Homer both also show the law of nature that before stated law of nature but with human interaction. On Point shows a dog of the pointer breed which is a popular hunting dog, looking down at some birds that are possibly quail. The birds are repeated as they trail to the right but are scaled down towards the right to show they are chicks. Right and Left show has two ducks in the center just like the previous paintings with one to the right and one to the left as the title suggests. The two birds a just about the same with one rotated towards the water as if it was shot. The blue and white mixture on the water under the ducks shows where the shot was fired though it isn’t clear which one was shot because of expression and posture of the left duck. It is apparent that Homer showed the fragility of life in nature.

The artists in my exhibition illustrate many different aspects of nature. I found that art with this theme usually have titles that are exactly what is seen in the painting with the perfect example in my exhibition being Head of Cabbage with Insects by Rosenwald.

Activity #6 MidTerm Exibition

Thomas Hart Benton
Trail Riders, 1964/1965
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art

William James Bennett
Niagara Falls from the American Side, published 1840
hand-colored aquatint with touches of engraving
National Gallery of Art

Charles S. Raleigh
Law of the Wild, 1881
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art

D.G. Stouter
On Point 1854
oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

Winslow Homer

Right and Left 1909

oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

Head of Cabbage with Insects
Rosenwald Collection
Watercolor
National Gallery of Art

Color Game

Here is my Color Game. Under each Definition is a word in red. Unscramble that word to match its defintion.

1. A color harmony composed of any three colors equidistant from each other on the color wheel.

idactri

2. A ray of light split into different colors.

frrecdeta

3. These colors are made by combining a primary color with an adjacent secondary color.

iatytrer

4. These types of colors are on the red-orange side of the wheel and associated with sunlight and firelight.

ramw

5. A color harmony that combines colors adjacent to one another.

lonagauos

Answers are in the comments