Know Your Art!

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Know Your Art!



Artists either conciously or subconsciously use different techniques to express their feelings or to bring forth emotions from his or her audience. Use this page to get your own inner understanding of these techniques.

What to Do? - Learning Terms

    Note: this first activity can be done individually or in groups.

  1. Take time to examine how the paintings on this page are grouped together.

  2. Go through the groups and examine the terminology associated with the paintings in the group.

  3. Read the question or questions above the three paintings in the grouping.

  4. Examine each of the paintings by clicking on the painting to increase it's size so that you can examine it more closely.

  5. Keeping the grouping's question in mind, examine each of the pictures.

  6. Take notes on each of the paintings in the grouping.

  7. Use your notes for the three different paintings to come up with one general answer for the technique.

  8. Type your response to each of the questions in the box provided.

Design Elements

Color

How do you think color is used to create special effects?

Point of Tranquility
by Morris Louis

Gas
by Edward Hopper

Auto Accident
by Howard Taft Lorenz

Line

How do you think line creates different feelings?

Palaeolithic Cave
Paintings in France

A Young Hare
by Albrecht Dürer

A Sunday Afternoon at the
Isle of the Grande Jatte

by Georges Seurat

Value

How do you think shading and lighting create special feelings?

Magdalen with the
Smoking Flame

by Georges de La Tour

The Mill
by Rembrandt

West 42nd Street
by John Taylor Arms

Composition (Shape and Form)

How do you think shape makes the viewer see things better?

The Mourning of Christ
by Giotto di Bondone

Haystack with Snow,
Morning

by Claude Monet

The Age of Enlightenment
by René Magritte

Principles of Design

Balance

What do you think are the different ways artists use balance?

Madonna with Saints...
by Titian

Among the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, California

by Albert Bierstadt

The Boat Studio
by Claude Monet

Texture

How do you think painters use texture to create different effects?

Princesse de Broglie
by Jean-Auguste-
Dominique Ingres

Rouen Cathedral
Early Afternoon
by Claude Monet

Riverbanks
by Paul Cézanne

Symmetry and Asymmetry

How do you think symmetry & asymmetry create different feelings in a painting?

The Holy Family
by Michelangelo

Juan de Pareja
by Diego Velázquez

People in the Sun
by Edward Hopper

Contrast

How do you think contrast creates tension in a painting?

Boy Playing Marbles
by David Gilmour Blythe

High Cliff,
Coast of Maine, 1894

by Winslow Homer

Composition with Red,
Yellow, and Blue

by Piet Mondrian

Dominance

How do you think artists use dominance to give their paintings a special feeling?

The Mona Lisa
by Leonardo da Vinci

The Flower Carrier
by Diego Rivera

The Milkmaid
by Jan Vermeer

Repetition

How do you think artists use repetition to make their work more interesting?

Bunraku
by James Rosenquist

Numbers in Color
by Jasper Johns

Corridor in the Asylum
by Vincent van Gogh

Rhythm

What special effects do you think rhythm brings to paintings?

The Starry Night
by Vincent van Gogh

Before the Start
by Gerald Sargent Foster

Little Girl Reading
by Berthe Morisot

Theme and Variation

How do you think theme and variation make paintings more interesting?

The School of Athens
by Raphael

Early Sunday Morning
by Edward Hopper

Bear Hunting
by Winslow Homer

Unity

How do you think artists bring together many things to create a masterpiece?

Saint George
and the Dragon

by Tintoretto

The Scream
by Edvard Munch

The Canal of
Loing at Moret

by Alfred Sisley