Art Critique Student Examples

Art Critique

Title: Her Bottle
Artist: Yuri Takei
Medium: Coloured pencil and oil pastel


Description:
Yuri Takei creates a work of art influenced by how objects life is useful to humans. "Her Bottle" is the name of his artwork. There is a bottle that is being shown in the light with a girl holding the bottle and putting her hand towards the lid of the bottle. The figure of small clouds surrounding the blue clear sky. When I first looked at this work, I found this really eye-catching because there was a lot of light and so much colour giving emphasis on the glass-looking shiny bottle. Also, it was at an angle which showed that the audience is in the perspective of a bin and that the girl was not going to throw the glass bottle. It looks really realistic as if it is just a picture. Because if you look closely at the glass, you can see the background of the sky's reflection on the bottle. There is so much detail of the shirt as Yuri coloured the dark areas to show those folding areas of the shirt and to make it look realistic. There are very bright colours used like blue and white to portray that this work was near towards the morning and with the bright sun shining on the girl and the bottle. The bottle is shaped as a cylindrical looking, clear and shiny with a circle lid. With the bottle shaped like that, there is also horizontal lines on the bottle. There are mostly freehand and curved lines to show the figure of the bottle and the girl. This work has an abstract texture. This is because it defines the actual appearance of the artwork created by Yuri. The overall effect is looking like it's in motion and it's moving because of how the artist has drawn this piece and coloured it.


Analysis:
The artist used the colour of the bottle with white, blue and green to show the figure of a glass bottle and to show a bit of reflection of the sky and the girl onto the bottle. The artist used various types of colour including warm and cold colours. This creates an effect on the audience as it shows the objects of the artwork including clouds, bottles and the girl. The artist uses mostly curved lines to show the motion of the image at a certain angle. There are both dark and light colours which abstract each other. In my opinion, I think that the dark is abstracting more than the light as Yuri is giving the audience a view as if they are the bin. This can be shown, as the dark colours she used to show the colours of the shirt and the skin of the girl. Yuri uses space between her hand and the lid of the bottle. She also uses space between the clouds and between the bottle and the sun. She uses form as she emphasises more also on the dark areas of this art piece. I like how she emphasises on the sun and the brightness of it reflecting onto the bottle. The way she made her portion is also good as she made the bottle smaller than the girl's body.


Interpretation:
Yuri Takei's statement to this work was "The aesthetics of this work was inspired by Janet Fish - an artist who focuses on the movement of light. This piece is situated in an angle where the audience is in the perspective of a bin. In here, I wanted to portray how objects' "lives" out determined by how humans perceive their [the object] usefulness". I think this portrays that she made her artwork in an angle to show how humans use bottles and to show the movement of light within this art piece. I feel calm and I question myself as to if bottles never existed, then how difficult it would be for humans to live. Yuri made this art piece to show how another artist inspired her to do some kind of art piece similar to Janet Fish. She was inspired to do an art piece with the movement of light.


Judgement:
It is a beautiful piece of artwork and this was the reason why I loved this piece. It had so much of bright colours and it was really outstanding and all the hard work Yuri must have put in order to make every single detail relate to her inspiration from Janet Fish. It also affects the way I see the world. This is because now I think about how many bottles we throw away and not re-use them. It creates a feeling as now I start to feel sentimental about bottles and it is really touching. This affects the audience as it tells them how hard Yuri has worked to make people feel that there is a movement of light and that people will like her artwork. I personally love this work due to its colour, the morning daylight. The daylight really attracts me to this artwork. It is formal and a Mimetic standard of art. This is formal because it can show the audience what exactly Yuri is trying to convey.

~ Peehu Agrawal

Drypoint Print student examples

Student Example #1

In this printing project, I was discover how to make my print into the best it can be. This project had many steps. Throughout this entire process I learned many new things that I have never experienced before.

First, I selected an image. I chose this image because I thought it was a good fit for what Mr. Laurence was looking for and because I love how the background is so dark, but the white marble monument is bright and stands out. Also, I took this picture- it isn't off the internet. This image is of the Jefferson Monument in Washington DC. Next, I focused on editing it on Photoshop. I had never used this app before, so I was very confused about how it functions and how to work it. After messing around and trying different buttons for a few minutes, I figured it out, and I adjusted the the ratio to 2:3, then sharpened the image set the radius to 7px, adjusted the threshold, and made the image 9 by 6. These edits made the image the correct size to fit on the paper and it made the lines really pop so that I knew where to carve. I taped a piece if clear plastic over my edited image, and I was ready to start the carving process.

My next step was carving the plastic. I could see the lines of my image clearly, so I started scratching the outline of the object with an etching needle. I struggled with keeping my lines straight, so I used a ruler to assure that they were as straight as can be. I also struggled with doing the top part of the monument because I couldn't use a ruler as the lines weren't straight. I retraced it many times, but the top part was still very uneven. Next, I used sandpaper to scratch the top part of the image to make it dark. I also rubbed sandpaper across the trees, but I made sure to keep the outline clear so that the trees wouldn't get lost in the sky. For the rest of the image, I simply traced what I saw onto the plastic. This was very different from carving in the linoleum print because the tools were a lot smaller and each etch was more important. In the linoleum print, I spent most of the carving time on the background, but for this one, my time was devoted to the little details that resulted in a better looking print.

Following the carving step, I moved to the inking and printing process. I first used black ink and applied it to my piece of plastic with a brayer. I used cotton pieces to wipe most of the ink off, so that it would only remain in the places I carved. After a few minutes of rubbing the plastic, I then wet a piece of paper to print on. I let it sit for a few minutes in the water then dried it in the paper stack. Next, I set my plate under the lifted felt blanket into the printing press. I carefully placed the piece of paper over it, and lowered the felt blanket and gently turned the roller towards me to apply pressure to make the image appear on the plate. This was my first print. It came out a little darker than my liking, so on the next one, I followed the same steps but made sure to wipe the plate for longer so that the final print wouldn't be so dark. I wasn't too happy with my first two prints, so I decided to do a third one. I did it in blue instead of black, and I loved the turn out much more than the black prints.

Next, I water coloured the second print I made. I really only used three colours: grey, blue, and green. Because this picture was taken at night, the background was a deep shade of blue. I added grey to the shadows to make the white parts shine even more, and thenI painted the trees green.

Looking back, there are definitely things I would do differently. First, I would spend more time on the carving part, as this is the foundation for the whole piece. When I did the etching part, I think I rushed it because I was anxious to move on to the ink and printing press parts. Also, I wouldn't have painted the trees green. I don't know what made me do that... the trees in the image are darker- almost black. Overall, I think that this was a good way for me to experience drypoint printing, and I know way more about this subject from when I started.

 

Linoleum 2 color print student examples

Student Example #1

I was introduced this topic by Mr Laurence as Linoleum printing. I did not know what that meant in the first lesson. I was told to use this kind of material which felt like rubber. I was first mentioned to choose an animal or something that can be carved.

During my second lesson, I thought of choosing a macaw bird as its details were kind of interesting to me. So I asked Mr Laurence what do I do after I chose my animal and he said to use tracing paper to trace the silhouette and then transfer the silhouette onto the Linoleum. This was kind of challenging as when I was retracing the silhouette from the tracing paper on the Linoleum, it did not really show the lines. Then I had to render the lines without using the tracing paper. He then said to be careful and draw the details of the bird on the other side of the Linoleum. He also said that when you flip the Linoleum, make sure that you flip it the correct way like you don't turn it upside down and flip it. I understood what he meant by that so I then drew in the details of the bird on the tracing paper and re-traced it onto the linoleum. That didn't work either so I drew the details directly onto the Linoleum. During this lesson, I wanted to finish carving the rest at home so I asked Mr Laurence if I could take it home and finish carving it and bring it back the next lesson for printing and he allowed me.

On my third lesson, I asked Mr Lawrence what I had to do after I drew the details onto the Linoleum, and he said that I have to use a blue or black marker to trace the silhouette and the details of the bird. After that, I had to use a carving tool to carve out the edges of the silhouette as you can see from figure 1. I carved out the areas near the silhouette and I carved them quite deep so I can use a roller to then add paint to it later on.

When I finished carving out this side, I then started to carve the detailed side. I asked Mr Lawrence if I carved it deeply enough and he said it's enough and he said to the same thing for the detailed side but then I also had to carve out the white spaces in between the blue lines (see fig 2). This was a bit difficult as the thickness of the carving piece was really big. I asked Mr Lawrence how I could carve out such small details if there is such a big carving piece. He told me that I had to unscrew the bottom of the carving tool which had smaller pieces that I could use to carve out the Linoleum. This took about an extra lesson (lesson 4) to carve both the silhouette and also the detailed side.

During my fifth lesson, I wanted to start adding paint and the I did this was that I had to paint using a roller and add a lighter colour to the silhouette side and a darker colour on the detailed side. I started off by using pink. I got a palette knife, the pink paint, and a palette to put the paint on. I used a palette knife to put a bit of paint and got the roller and started to roll all the way till all the sides of the roller were pink. After this, I rolled this pink paint on the silhouette side of the linoleum and I had to get a piece of white paper. I needed to put this on a board that had thick edges looking like a right-angle board.

I realised that I had to place my linoleum at the corners of the right-angled board and place the paper onto the linoleum with the paper cornering the right-angle. I pressed the paper gently onto the linoleum and pressed the sides of the linoleum and firmly pressed it to get the print of the first side. Before starting the other side, I had to wash off the linoleum with water and soap and dry it with a napkin so it does not leave a mark on the table and so I can add different paint on this side and on the other side. I also had to wash the palette with the paint remaining and the roller. After this, I repeated this same process but using brown as a darker colour. For this side, I messed it up as I forgot to corner the paper to the edges of the board for it to come out proper. As you can see from figure 3, it looks shifted as I did not really do this print well. I started to repeat this same process. As a result, I made 2 more during this lesson (see fig 4 and 5). 

The challenging part was that I forgot sometimes which side to put the paper on as I put paint on both sides and did not wash off the other side. The problem was that I was supposed to finish it during this lesson, but then one lesson, I left the linoleum at home so I had to start with the next topic.

Overall, I really liked this topic as I learned a lot. For example, I didn't know what Linoleum or how beautiful prints like these are used from linoleum. There were a lot of challenges that I faced when working on this topic in and outside of school. I love all of my printings but one of the ones I really love is 2nd (pink and purple) and last print (red and black print). I could really improve on the 1st and 3rd print. For the 4th print, I think the colours were not good that I chose. But I think I did a good job overall for this topic.