Description
Your assignment will be to visit a local museum in Wichita Falls, TX and to critique an exhibit. You should focus on either the media of painting or printmaking. Please be sure to contact your instructor for approval prior to beginning this assignment. Your detailed analysis should be written in the form of a three-page essay in which you discuss such aspects as subject, color, composition, material, scale, technique, and style. See the list below for more details on the aspects of paintings listed in this assignment.
Analysis of Paintings – The Five Elements of Composition
Composition – What is the subject or narrative? How is the work organized and unified? How do your eyes move around the work, and what do you focus on?
Color – Describe the color and explain how it affects the mood of the work and how it is used to organize the composition.
Objects – What exactly is in the work? Figures? landscape? Is it crowded or empty? Is it naturalistic or abstract, and to what degree?
Technique – Describe the brush stroke in a painting, or the particular material of a sculpture, and how the material is used or manipulated. How does the material that the artist chose contribute to the interpretation of the work?
Size and Shape – Is the work large or small, horizontal or vertical? How does this contribute to how you read it?
