Foundations in Painting

The Museum Paper

• Choosing a Museum
  • Museum of Fine Arts (Downtown St. Petersburg): (727) 896-2667
    • Museum of Fine Arts
      255 Beach Dr NE
      St Petersburg, FL 33701
  • Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art (on the Tarpon Campus): (727) 712-5762
    • Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art
      600 Klosterman Rd
      Tarpon Springs, FL 34689
  • Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota): (941) 359-5700
    • Ringling Museum of Art
      5401 Bay Shore Rd
      Sarasota, FL 34243
• The Paper
  • 600-700 words analyzing one painting using the terminology presented
  • Must deal with the three categories of Perspective, Color/Light, and Paint Application
    

Perspective

• The picture plane - the two dimensional surface on which the image is drawn
• Illusion of depth (picture plane as a sheet of glass)
  • Vertical Perspective
    • Objects placed higher on the picture plane tend to appear "further away"
    • Foreground vs background
  • Overlapping Perspective
    • Objects placed in front of other objects will obscure them
  • Size Perspective
    • Objects proportions are reduced to imply distance
    • Smaller objects tend to appear further away
  • Foreshortening
    • Objects drawn with parallel lines so as to converge toward a vanishing point
    • to reduce or distort (parts of a represented object that are not parallel to the picture plane) in order to convey the illusion of depth
  • Atmospheric Perspective
    • An attempt by the artist to take the atmosphere into account when depicting distant objects
    • Lack of detail and blurring effect
    • Shift of the color toward the cool end of the spectrum

Color and Light

• Hue
  • The property of color
  • Cool colors and their tendency to recede
  • Warm colors and their tendency to project
• Value
  • The property of light and dark
  • Low (darkness) vs High (lightness) value
  • Shading to lower value vsTinting to raise value
  • Modeling
    • Gradual changes or gradations in values
    • Usually referencing the uneven appearance of light on objects such as drapery, surfaces, etc
  • Flat color
    • The absence of modeling on a broad area
    • No changes of values over an extended area

Paint Applications

• Opaque
  • Paint applied without translucence
  • The under-painted surface is completely obscured
• Glaze
  • Liquefied paint so as to allow the under-painted surface to shine through
  • Translucence of light and its effect on resulting color
• Impasto
  • Paint that is the consistency of a thick paste
  • Directly, or nearly so applied from the tube
• Scumbling
  • Opaque paint applied to a textured surface so as to not completely obscure the under-painted surface

Humanities Resource of Mark Hunter