STOP!

In my Art History class we were given thirty minutes to write on this piece of art...

January 2, 2007

A young woman is on her way to pick up her daughter in an old black comet convertible. She has the top down with the music blaring. She thinks she is the only one on the road. She is late and decides to run the red light in front of her instead of coming to a stop. Little does she know that another car is speeding through the light. She is hit. The scene is a street now silent after the deafening noise. Nothing else is clear except the fact that she has made the wrong choice. Nothing else is clear except for the red light.

The sketch is an abstract drawing titled January 2, 2007. Clare Coyle Taylor’s drawing from colored pencils on bristol board has many different primary colors. Coyle layers many of the colors giving it a slightly murky color. It is somewhat unclear as to what the rest of the picture is. The focal point is the red circle that is slightly off center. It is the clearest part of the whole sketch. The pencil marks are long and random without any organization or pattern. She does not try very hard to stay within the border that she has drawn. She uses black for the outsides of the two larger squares in the middle. This sketch shows the clarity of the red light and the unclearness of the rest of the sketch.

LaGrenouillère (1869) - Formal Analysis

Claude Monet

The most distinctive feature of the work is the perfect use of color. Monet used earth tomes like green and brown to create this painting. Monet used different shades of yellows and greens to show the differences in the trees. Violet is used in the foreground water along with blues. The blues of the sky and the blues of the water are similar showing the reflection of the sky in the water White is used as an accent throughout the piece.

Monet uses colors that are side by side on the color wheel. Red, violet, blue-violet, blue, blue-green, yellow-green and yellow are the main colors. The colors are put side by side instead of blended together. This makes it look more realistic. There are lots of cool colors to make the painting look more relaxed and exciting.

Based on natural lighting, the darkest values are the shaded areas. There is. The boats and the restaurant are dark and in a shadow at the front of the painting. The sky is light and bright on the left and dark and cloudy on the right. The natural sunlight shades different areas of the piece. For example, shading of the foreground in and around the island, when the background is lighted by the natural light, and is not shaded.

There are many lines and angles evident in this painting. Horizontal lines are seen where the shoreline is in the background as well as where the bridge connects the floating platform and the café. There is a horizontal line where the shore line should be in the foreground. Vertical lines are the trees across the shore in the background; branches hanging in the foreground, and some of the people are vertical, but not all of them.

The rooflines are made to make the roof appear to slant at an angle. There are some geometric lines and shapes on the boats and café. The floating platform is large and round. It draws everything to it for the focal point of the piece.

Monet uses the dock and the railing to create lines going towards the raft. The boats create a line pointing directly at the floating platform at the center of the painting. The lines all draw attention to the center.

Linear perspective is shown in many ways. The island looks as if it is a top of a cylinder. The corner of the restaurant is at an angle so it gives it depth. The bridge on the left side is also angled diagonally left to show that you can walk to the island. The boats are painted only to show the top and the side of them and they are also angled so you can view them from the side.

Every inch of space is covered with paint. There are no negative spaces. The painting is not perfectly symmetrical, yet it is balanced. The center island is not actually in the very center, but just off center. The painting is balanced well. There is something happening in each one of the sections. The corner of the restaurant shown on the right side takes up space and you can view the people in the restaurant. The dancing pavilion in the center pulls your eyes more towards center and they also have a better view of the people sitting and dancing. On the left side you can view people swimming, and also the boats give that side more of full balanced look.

The painting gives a lot of perspective. The island is distant from the two boats and that shows that there is distance between the island and the docked boats. Also the two bridges show perspective between the island and restaurant, and between the island and the land the bridge appears to be extending out to. In the background the beach appears to be far in the distance. The trees on the beach show scale between the two. The people who are swimming look as if they are distant from the island because of the water between them, their smaller size, and the clarity and detail.

Monet uses very short, swift brushstrokes. The small variations between the sizes of the strokes in foreground and background are done to suggest depth. His brushwork is very descriptive changing sizes for different forms. Long even strokes outline the boats, short horizontal smears indicate the foreground water and background trees, and abrupt jabs are used for the foreground trees.

These different aspects of the painting show a fair day at the lake. The strokes of the brush show movement in the water. Monet’s use of light, motion, nature, distinctive brush strokes and the white make the painting seem very realistic.