Types of painting

You can write about ANY painting you wish. If you have a favorite
artist from your own hometown, city, state or country, I’d love for
you to introduce your classmate and myself to their work.
If you don’t already have a painting in mind, following are 30
suggestions.
Please write your Formal Analysis by Googling a high-rez image;
the images on this PDF are painfully low-rez.
Look at Wikipedia
or at ListSurge at this address:
FIRST 11-PARAGRAPH
FORMAL ANALYSIS;
these are just some
suggestions for
paintings to
“formally analyze”
Art 100 FORMAL ANALYSIS PAPER DUE MARCH 28th. Thursday.
Be sure that your Formal Analysis includes:
1.) Subject Matter and Content: the objective evidence of what is before you
If it’s a historical event, such as Guernica or The Raft Of The Medusa, please research it. Is it a scene from a myth or a
story? Is this a popular motif?
2.) FOCAL POINT
3.) Body Language and
4.) Facial Expression
5.) LIGHT SOURCE AND SHADOW (look at which way the shadows are headed to determine the light source); what
time of day do you think it is?
6.) HOW SPACE IS CREATED AND DESCRIBED; through
gradient tones or
overlapping shapes or
repeated uniform geometric shapes that recede (in other words, a vanishing point).
7.) Design or Composition: how the artist leads your eye.
The artist’s use of unity, rhythm, repetition, balance (or imbalance) to organize your experience.
How diagonals, horizontals and verticals are employed.
Which shapes are biomorphic, which shapes are geometric.
8.) PALETTE; the colors an artist chooses
identify the warm colors in your paper
identify the cool colors in your paper
9.) Technical Use of Material: the texture, the medium, the brushwork, the application of paint, marks left on the paint
etc.
Texture; for instance, brushstrokes OR, if it’s a sculpture, describe the surface of the stone or metal the artist used
Glossiness of varnish
10.) INTERPRETATION your subjective impression of what the painting is about:
(Meaning and Symbolism)
(or it’s the story or narrative being told)
11.) State whether this artwork is typical of the artist’s work. Google the artist’s other work to get an idea of what kind
of style the artist is known for,
what “school” or art movement the artist belonged to. Reference Other interpretations of same subject.
Get a quote by the artist or a quote about the artist.