In Viola Frey’s sculptre, “Family Portrait,” she attempts to capture the hierarchical structure of a patriarchal family.  The father’s head sits in the center of the sculpture, and it’s size compared to the other family members instantly grabs the viewer’s attention.  The other members of the household are gathered around him.  The man’s wife and children are moderately sized, showing that they are next in importance after the father.  The smallest figures are the servants, who are dwarfed by the actual members of the family.  This indicates that they are of the least importance in the household.

Another different use of scale can be seen in Giovanni Paolo Pannini’s “Interior of the Pantheon.”  In this painting the artist is not trying to convey any sort of hierarchy.  Pannini uses scale to simply show how huge the Pantheon is.  At the bottom of the painting, tiny human figures go about there business.  The vast majority shows the huge dome that rises over them.  The people in the painting look miniscule in comparison to the extraordinarily high ceiling of the Pantheon.  Their only purpose in this painting is to communicate the size of the building to the viewer.

Scale can be used in many different ways to communicate meaning to the viewer.  It can show the size of objects or how important something is to the artist.  When used effectively, scale can be a very powerful tool for an artist to convey meaning in his or her works of art.

There is also a lot of motion in the picture.  The image of the man is repeated to make it seem as if he is running down the stairs.  This repetition also shows the passage of time.  By making the man look the same in each of these repetitions we can tell that it is supposed to be one man moving down the stairs rather than several stationary men.

Line and shape play the main role in creating the effect of this piece.  The image of the man changes first into a 2D image, then slowly changes into three dimensional cubes through the manipulation of shapes and lines.  However, this effect is also due to the different shades of grey.  There are no colors, just different values from white to black that separate the repeated shapes from each other.  Different values of grey are also used in the top half of the painting to create shadows, which make the building and the men seem three-dimensional, rather than flat as they are on the bottom.

In our lives as humans, we use color in many different ways as well.  For example, color can be used to convey emotion.  Dark colors can show sadness, while warm colors convey happiness.  If color is used well enough, it can even take us beyond simply getting the idea of an emotion, and actually make us feel it.  

Bright colors can be used to capture our attention, whether its the bright red of a stop sign warning us of an intersection or a brightly colored billboard being used to advertise something.  Conversely, muted colors can be used to make us feel calm and at ease.

Color works the same way in art as it does in the real world.  Color is one of the best tools an artist has to display emotion in a piece.  Color can also be used to direct the attention of the viewer to different parts of the painting.  Whether in art, nature or manmade objects, color plays a very important role in our lives.

When I look out my window I see different types of shapes.  There are trees and bushes and clouds.  We don’t usually think of these organic shapes in terms of they’re shapes.  When we see a tree we don’t see an organic shape, we just see a tree.

Value is another aspect of art that we experience every day.  However, sometimes it’s not as obvious as the shapes we see.  All you have to do is open a book or a newspaper and start reading to see how value plays a role in our lives.  There is a reason why the pages of books are white and the lettering is black.  It makes it easier for us to read than if the letters were a lighter shade.  Ultimately, we experience color and value everywhere we go, whether we are conscious of it or not.

If I were to redo my piece I would definitely try to use line to a larger extent.  As it was, my drawing was fairly disjointed.  The different elements of the drawing were scattered around and were mostly separate from each other.  I think that with better use of line I could have tied the piece together and made it flow much better.  With that done, elements such as the city in the background wouldn’t have gotten lost so easily.  My drawing was also fairly flat and two-dimensional.  With better use of line I could have given it more depth.  I could have also made the textures of the ground and the ocean more interesting.  As they were, the textures in my piece were very bland.

Line is extremely important in art, and I think that with better use of it my drawing could have been much more successful.

I suppose this lack of creativity probably stems from mostly internal factors.  Firstly, I would say that a lack of skill and, because of this, confidence are the main contributors to my low levels of creativity in this class.  Simply drawing an object allows me to have a guide for what I should be doing, whereas drawing something straight from my imagination doesn’t afford that luxury.  Because of this, I hope my levels of creativity will increase as the semester goes on and I gain more skill in drawing.  

However, I found the quote from Beverly Pepper on in Chapter 1 to be fairly appropriate to my situation.  She says, “it was important for me to learn that what I wanted was really no different from what other artists wanted: confidence that I could be my own censor, my own audience, my own competition” (Pepper, Foundations of Art and Design p.9).  I need to learn to think less about what other people think and simply create for myself, not only in this class but in my writing as well.

My interest in drawing probably came from my grandfather, who was an art teacher and cartoonist.  He used to give me sketching pads and boxes of colored pencils as presents.  Drawing became one of my favorite hobbies.  I especially enjoyed drawing little cartoons, hoping that someday I would get them published in magazines, just like my grandfather.

As I grew older, I drew fewer cartoons and became more interested in still life drawing.  In middle school I started skateboarding and snowboarding, and that influenced my drawings as well.  I would draw designs for the bottoms of boards and sketches of shoes that I imagines would someday be made.  

This was about as far as my drawing interest went, though.  Perhaps I thought that my drawings weren’t good enough and decided to focus on my other strengths.  Whatever my reason was, I had completely quit drawing and all forms of visual art by high school.

Now, thanks to liberal arts requirements, it seems I will be giving art another try.  Perhaps this class will rekindle my interest in drawing again.