APPRECIATING PAINTING

Objectives:

a. Discover and discuss the elements of painting

b. Execute different moods in painting
c. Determine the ways of how to appreciate Paintings
Different Moods in Painting

1. Melancholic

 The word “melancholic” references the use of muted colors, such as black and
grays ,and a sense of loneliness or isolation in the subject matter of the painting.

2. Joy

 The word “joyful’ adds a feeling of happines or elation to the mood of a painting.
It suggests a light, positive atmosphere that evokes a sense of happiness and
delight.

3. Nostalgic

 The word “nostalgic” to describe the mood of painting creates a feeling of

sentimentality and evokes emotions and memories associated with the past.

4. Serene

 The word “serene” conveys a feeling of stillness, tranquility, and contentment,

and can evoke a sense of escape from chaos and turmoil of the world.

5. Intense

 The word “intense” describes the mood of a painting by conveying a feeling of

high emotion or passion. An intense painting might be characterized by vivid
colors, strong brushstrokes, and dynamic composition.

6. Pensive

 The word “pensive” conveys a feeling of deep reflection or contemplation. When

used to describe the mood of a painting , pensive implies that the painting
inspires introspection, and a sense of stillness.

7. Haunting

 The word “haunting” can help the viewer to visualize a painting that is eerie,
spooky, or has a dark sinister quality to it. It evokes a sense of unease or
discomfort when thinking about the painting.

8. Romantic

 The word “romantic” can convey a feeling of tenderness, passion, and intimacy,
that evokes a sense of emotional connection and beauty.

9. Bleak
  The word “bleak” implies a feeling of darkness and emptiness, which can evoke
strong emotions in the viewer. The use of bleak colors, such as grays, blacks,
and blues, can help to create a bleak mood in the painting.

10. Vibrant

 The word “vibrant” creates a visual and emotional connection between the reader
and the artwork. It implies a sense of energy, liveliness, and boldness, which can
immediately convey a feeling of excitement and enthusiasm to the viewer.

How to appreciate Art?

Art can often seem inaccessible because it has been stereotyped in popular culture as
something that only particularly educated or wealthy people can enjoy. However, this couldn’t
be further from the truth! Anyone can come to appreciate art with a little bit of time and effort.
Learning about the context around a work of art, understanding the craft, and using your
imagination to bring your own interpretation to art can help you enjoy it more!

Method 1: Understanding the Artist and their Context

Understand the historical context of the time when the art was produced. Artists often
create works to comment on major historical events, and this can give you a window into their
unique perspective. In contrast, powerful institutions and people throughout history often
commissioned artists to create pieces that endorsed their agendas. This affects the intended
audience of the art piece — who was meant to see the art.

 For example, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) was created in response to the bombings
during the Spanish Civil War. It’s filled with anti-war symbolism. Picasso said of the
artwork: “Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war against
brutality and darkness.”

 During the Renaissance, the Roman Catholic Church relied a lot on commissioned art as
a means of promoting their cause and asserting their power.

Find out the genre of the painting. If you’re looking at a painting, knowing what genre it
belongs to can be helpful. Genres are essentially categories that are used to classify art. In
painting, the established and well-known genres are landscape, portraiture, genre paintings
(which are paintings of scenes from ordinary life), history, and still life.

 John Constable’s The Hay Wain (1821) is a famous Landscape painting that led to the
resurgence of landscape painting in the 19th century.
 Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) by Johannes Vermeer is considered to be a masterpiece
of portraiture.
 Judith Leyster’s Carousing Couple (1630) is a great example of a genre painting.
 History paintings depict a moment in a specific historical narrative. Vasily Surikov’s The
Morning of the Streltsy Execution (1881) is a very intricate history painting example.
  Lastly, still life paintings are of inanimate, commonplace objects. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers
(1889) is a bright and sunny still life example.

Learn about the art movements or schools that influenced the piece. Art movements were
surges in popularity of certain ways of creating art. An art “school” is basically just a group of
artists, sometimes all in the same region, who all have a similar style or subject matter. Knowing
a little bit about these can help you understand why an artist might have made certain choices.

 For example, painters in the Egyptian school of art had certain rules that they had to
follow — like the size of any figure they drew was supposed to vary based on the social
status of the person they were painting. They also couldn’t use more than six colors, and
each color symbolized a different aspect of life or death.
 Impressionism, one of the largest 19th-century art movements, is defined by short, loose
brushstrokes that are intended to capture the quality of light.

Read up on the life and perspective of the artist. Learning a bit about the artist who created
a piece can help shed light on it in a variety of ways. It can help you understand why they made
certain artistic decisions, or chose to make the work at all in the first place.

 For example, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo had limited mobility after fighting off polio and
enduring a bus accident in her early life. Her pain and struggle manifests in several of
her pieces.

Method 2: Recognizing an Artist’s Craft

Learn when the piece was produced. Art museums typically have informational plaques next
to each work that will provide basic information about the piece. Knowing when a piece of
artwork was created can help you appreciate the difficulty involved in making it.

 For instance, landscape paintings produced before the rise of photography (which began
to include landscapes around 1860) were definitely more challenging to do!

Identify the medium that was used to make the art. A medium refers to the material used to
create a piece of art. The type of material used affects how the artist made the piece. If you
can’t tell which medium was used, museums or galleries will often state the medium of an
artwork on informational plaques.

 Oil and acrylic paints are examples of media for painters, while bronze and marble are
media for sculptors.
 With the rise of modern art, media has expanded to include not just types of paint and
stone, but also materials like found/appropriated objects or even bodily excretions. This
has led to the creation of the term “mixed-media,” which is used when talking about an
art piece made from a variety of materials.

Recognize the artist’s effort to convey lines. For visual works, notice the artist’s ability to
create confident lines. Lines are created when an artist draws or paints marks on a page, when
a sculptor bends or shapes material, or when a photographer angles their camera a certain way.
Some ways to describe lines are dashed, bold, rough, smooth, or implied.

Pay attention to the shapes that stand out in the painting. Note any interesting shapes that
grab your eye when you look at a piece of art and think about how the artist achieved them.
Shapes can be geometric or organic.

 Geometric shapes are simple, commonly-recognized shapes like squares or rectangles.

Organic shapes are unique and free-form.

 Looking at still life paintings of fruit is a great way to understand how artists have
experimented with shape.

Notice how the artist uses color. Ask yourself why the artist chose to use the combination of
colors that they did and if these colors work in harmony or contrast. Color has an enormous
effect on how we feel when we look at a piece.

 For example, pieces with blue undertones are known to have a calming effect on the
viewer. Meanwhile, yellow is associated with light and feelings of optimism.

tudy the brushwork of a painted piece. Brushwork, or the way that the artist applied paint using
their brush, really sticks out when you are looking at paintings in-person. It’s used to create
certain effects in the art, contributing to both texture and mood.

For example, the feathery, light brushwork in Impressionist paintings is intended to mimic the
qualities of light.

Harsh and erratic brush strokes can communicate a sense of tension and anxiety in a piece.[19]