HH's Grade 10 Art

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Stylistic Techniques

The first stylistic technique that I will be discussing is the one point perspective. From the three techniques we were supposed to discuss we were told to do either one point or two point. I choose one point because I had an exterior drawing and I also seemed to be more comfortable with it. The idea of all the lines meeting at one vanishing points gives an illusion of depth on the picture plane, and that is what my painting was all about. Looking at the renascence period I decided to use a painting by an anonymous source,

Painting of an Ideal City

This reference was helpful because in my painting the vanishing point was also the door in the middle:

You can see from my drawing all the lines meet up to the dot at the bottom of the door. Therefore, that dot is my vanishing point. If we look at the painting from the renascence period it is the same all the lines meet at the top of the door. These two examples create an illusion of depth on the picture plane.

The second technique I would like to discuss is my atmospheric perspective. Since almost a half of my painting was sky I decided that I had enough space to create that technique. I used Piero della Franscesca's painting as my reference, I think he did an excellent job in showing the viewer atmospheric perspective:

Battista Sforza and Feferico da Montefltro

He was an excellent reference and as you can see from my painting I did a decent job to show the atmospheric perspective:

You can see from my painting I built up the blue from almost a white at the bottom to an almost blackish blue at the top, it was a very time consuming job, but if payed off. I think that the atmospheric perspective creates an illusion of depth on the picture plane.

The last technique I would like to talk about are my pillars on either side of the building. I think that the pillars were the building blocks of the painting and without then there would be no true illusion of depth. To assist me in drawing the pillars I used Gebtille Bellini's painting:

Procession of the True Cross

We can see from the painting above the columns on either side were of great help to me, they assisted me in making my own columns:

We can see from both the examples above that they create an example of depth on the picture plane.

I found that the atmospheric perspective was very helpful through my process and I discovered that in atmospheric perspective you have to layer on layer after layer in order to get the true feeling of depth. You also have to do this if you want the colour to blend in nicely for the eye form light to dark or visa verse.

Two skills that I learnt were, how to go in depth for one point perspective and do a whole painting using that technique, this is the first time I did a whole paining like that so it was a learning experience for me. I also learned, how to create columns/pillars in perspective and I used those examples in my work, I learned to start of big, widely spaced apart, and go to small, close together.

I feel that I would like to work on colour mixing because it was a hard for me to get the colour that I wanted, I know colour mixing is a kind of trial and error thing were you put in a little of this and you get this and then you put a little more in and so on. I would like to be familiar with which shades a colour I will get if I put in a fraction of one colour and another fraction of another colour. This would help me in the future with paintings.

I look forward to the final summative

Finished final image of Perspective Painting

Pictures of Process (Perspective Painitng)

Blog Summary on Perspective Painting

I would like to start off by saying that this was a very time-consuming project but not in a negative way. There were a lot of steps to go through and each one required a lot of time.

The first step and probably the most important step in this project was to learn perspective drawing. Everyone in the class was comfortable with one-point perspective including me because we did it last year. However, two-point perspective was new to me and it took a couple of classes for me to get accustomed with it. We sketched both perspectives on large pieces of paper, which are in my folder. In my opinion, that was a very good start for me because I touched up on some of my old skills and learned something new.

The second step in the project was a go through the PowerPoint's that Ms. Cockburn showed us later in the unit. From these PowerPoint's we were supposed to gather ideas and make thumbnail sketches.

From my thumbnail sketches, I decided that for my Perspective painting that I would choose the building: The Tempietto located in Rome. I found a very good picture on the Internet and decided to go from there:

The next step was, to transfer my thumbnail sketch onto a big piece of paper the size of my canvas.

After that was completed we were told to get some tracing paper and trace our drawings from the big paper:

During that time we had to prime our panels for painting with gesso:

We than had to transfer by pencil our drawing from the tracing paper onto the panel. For me when I traced it on, it came up very light and therefore, I went over it with pencil to darken it so it would be easier when I went to paint to see the lines:

Once the drawing was on the panel it was time to paint it! I decided to stick with acyclic paints because I used them throughout the year. The completed painting looked like this:

In conclusion I would like to say that this was a very rigorous unit, it involved a lot of different styles of art, we had to draw, stencil, paint, think, and use styles from the renascence period. Overall, I enjoyed this project and look forward to the final summative!