What is a portrait?

1. What is a portrait? a portrait...
- ...is a portrayal.
- ...is where the face and its expression is predominant.
- ...is an accurate discription of a mood.
- ...is a painting of a real, rather than an imaginary, person.
- ...usual shows just the face, but can include a part or all of the body.
- ...is intended to show likeness, personality and even the mood of the person.
2. (Describe how the artist uses color, composition, and subject matter (objects, setting, clothing, etc.) to communicate something about the person whose portrait they’ve made OTHER than what the person looks like.)

Title: Madame X

Artist: John Singer Sargent

Year: 1883 -1884

*How does this artists use the concept of portrait? How does the artist work within the tradition of portrait-making?

This artist uses the concept of portrait by portaying the person by the way he positioned her and it the position also shows the mood of the painting. The painting is a full body portrait. The facial expression in the painting emphasizes the mood in the painting.

Title: Self-Portrait

Author: Chuck Close

Year: 2000 -2001

* How does this artists use the concept of portrait? How does the artist work within the tradition of portrait-making?

This is a self-portrait of Chuch Close himself. It is a portrait of a real person. This self-portrait is the traditional making of self-portraits with a bit of a twist. It is the tradition of portrait making because this self-portrait is an image that portrays him and also the usual self-protraits shows his face/his expression/his emotion clearly.

Title: Shiva at White Castle Creek

Artist: (unknown)

Year: (unknown)

*How does this artists use the concept of portrait? How does the artist work within the tradition of portrait-making?

Though this painting is in black and white you can clearly see what the artist portayed. He used the position to show some the mood of the painting. the position of her hands looks like she is praying. What also really help find the mood is the black, grey, and white colors. Looking at the girls face you can see the emotion that the artist is trying to portray.

A Sense of Place

Title: Psychodrama
Artist: Edward Hopper
Date: 1927

Title: The Rehearsal
Artist: Edgar Degas
Date: 1875

Describe the moods of the two paintings:

In the painting "Psychodrama " by Edward Hopper the mood is...

- quiet

- peaceful

- lonely

- a little colofrul around the person and around her it seems lifeless

In the painting "The Rehearsal" by Edgar Degas the mood is...

- full of life

- musical

- a happy ambiance

- bright

- energetic

Where Are You At?

What has been the most challenging aspect of the course so far?
I would have to say that the most challenging aspect of the course for far is trying to get the right color and shadow.
In what areas have you progressed the most and how have you progressed?
The area I have progressed in is mixing the colors. The way I have progressed is that I work fast and thing about the detail after I get the basics.
How does looking at examples of painting from throughout history affect us as painters today?
We see that many painters had different ways of painting, different color combinations, different reasons for painting what they did and they had different ideas of what to paint. I think that painters today seem to combine all the different ideas, colors, and textures to paint what we see or imagine.

SOME famous paintings

Nighthawks
- Find out who made it and where they are from?

This artist is Edward Hopper and lived from 1882 to 1967. It was made in 1942. He is to be known as to the first significant American painter in twentieth century art. His art is the "New Realism". Edward Hopper spent years in France before moving to the United States and developed his new techniques.

- What is the painting about?
The scene was inspired by a restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village. When he made this painting the light of the restaurant is the only one left still burning in the sleeping city.

Creating the Illusion of Surface and Textures

Title: Still Life With a Ginger Jar
By: Paul Cezanne
Value
(Painters use highlights (tints), mid-tones, and shadows (shades) to represent the planes they see in a form. They also vary between these three values to show the surface of an object changes across its surface.)
In this painting you can see the shadow of all the different objects. using the shadow you can see the folds of the textures. In the white cloth you can see some greenish-blue highlights. In the white cloth there is also a mixture of greyish-green mid-tones and light black shadowing in the foldes. When you look at the fruit you can see in where the light is coming from because of the direction the shadows of the fruits are going. Also he used the light brown highlights, mid-tones, and dark brownish-green shadowing to show that the drawer of the cradensa in open.
Edges
(Painters vary the way they represent the edge of an object to capture its essence whether that is what the object is made of or its weight, etc.)
When you look at the two different clothes; blue and white clothes. You can see that the blue, black, and a bit of white is heavier than the white cloth. The blue cloth actually looks more like a fancy table cloth where as the white cloth just looks like a simple light weight cloth. When you look at the green object infront of the dark green vase, the painter makes it look likes its heavy, maybe just as heavy as a bowling ball. Now when you look at the two vases; dark green vase and the blue, beige and white vase. It seems like the green vase it much heavier than the blueish-beige vase.
Brushwork
The reason why i think that the green vase looks heavier than the blueish-beige vase is because the impasto (real texture created by layering paint on top of paint to build thickness) brush strokes create the illusion of thickness.
The blending for the cradensa seems to be blended with a dry brush (when colors are mixed together using a dry brush to create a subtle change in color) Where as the white cloth seems like it was blended wet paint into wet paint. (when colors are mixed together on the canvas with short brushstrokes) What i like about the fruit is that it seems to use both a dry brish and wet paint into wet paint.