Painting Analysis Essay

864 Words4 Pages
Painting is a skill that many people attribute to natural talent or to years and years of practice, but that’s simply not the case. For starters, natural talent doesn’t really exists. A talented person is someone with enough passion for what they’re doing to stick with it until they’re good. But to make a decent painting, you don’t need to spend years trying to get good, you just need a good understanding of some basic art principals and the patience to stick to your original idea until the piece is complete. First, you need to choose a subject, anything you want. Your cat, your old tennis shoes or even a picture you found on Google images. Your painting can be of anything, really. Just make sure your subject is something you aren’t going to…show more content…
A good rule to stand by when deciding your placement is the Rule of Thirds. The rule of thirds splits your paper into 3 equal parts, either horizontally or vertically. The rule states that the most aesthetically appealing placement for your subject, the place where it will look the best, is along one of those lines. Where you place your subject will also affect the tone of your piece, how you’re painting makes others feel. If you place your subject low down on a vertical line, it will feel more grounded and safe to the viewer. Inversely, if you place your subject higher up on the line, it will look free and adventurous, but it could also look out of control. This is because the different placements on the paper remind the viewer of the difference between sky and land where land equals safety, but sky equals…show more content…
Then the complementary color scheme might be for you! This pallet uses two colors that are on the EXACT OPPOSITE sides of the color wheel from each other. A bright orange bird flying through an azure sky is a perfect example of this and depending on how vivid and pure your make your colors you can make this scheme as subtle or as bold as you wish! But, you can run into problems with this color scheme. Let’s say you’re painting a bright red fire engine, but you don’t want to use green to contrast it because then your painting would look too Christmas like and festive. This is when the split complementary color scheme comes into play. With this color scheme you choose two colors like you would for the complementary color scheme, BUT you choose one of those colors and use the color on either side of it instead. So, continuing with the fire truck example, if the truck was red and the opposite color is green, then you would actually use teal and yellow-green instead of a true green. This gives the painting more variety and removes the threat of the piece looking ready for the
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