Chap 4 Artist Review : Albert Bierstadt

Albert Beirstadt was a German Born American painter who drew sketches while on a expedition with the U.S. Army Engineers to Map an overland route during the 1850"s. With those sketches, he used them as a template to created his paintings. The technique that Beirstadt used to create his landscape paintings is the atmospheric perceptive. Beirstadt"s painting The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Rock, shows the leveled ground with bright crisp colors of the trees, waterfall and the Native American camp ground. Then looking upwards the mountains get a little higher and further away with paler colors that seem a little out of focus. then at the top where the mountains are sky high is more out of focus an paler. the painting as a whole is realistic which was the goal of many western art paintings.

Chap 4 Artist Review : Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat was an artist who used techniques called optical color mixture and pointillism to create his artworks. His most famous painting called A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, was created by pointillism where the colors are not blended, but uses small dot of color. The placement of the certain color dots would create a picture looking at it from a far. Then looking at the painting from the distance the colors would blend together creating texture and different shades of the colors, this would be the optical color mixture that Seurat was going for.

Chap 4 Artist Review : Camille Pissaro

Camille Pissaro was an impressionist painter who was started using spectral palette during the 19th century. What Pissaro would to is select a few colors and mix them together to create his painting. With the colors that he picked out and put on his palette is where he would paint. Those colors would be on the edge, then mixed to his desired colors and paint his picture in the center of the palette. His Painting palette with a landscape, shows how Pissaro  created it using his spectral palette technique with a few colors around the edge and the landscape in the center.

Chap 3 Artist Review :Wang Jian

Wang Jian is a Chinese artist who also painted landscapes but nothing like Thomas Cole. Jian painted landscapes in a traditional Chinese style, he used light simple colors like white, Grey, and black with some shading. Jian 's way of painting these landscapes were not of normal ways of viewing places that makes them different from the way Cole painted. Jian's painting almost looks dream like than realistic line "The Oxbow" painting.

Chap 3 Artist Review : Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole was painter who used landscapes as his painting subject during the 19th century. His most famous painting is "The Oxbow." In the painting is a river curving down small mountains, Cole drew what he saw down to small details of the farmland, trees and dark stormy clouds. Looking at the painting makes you feel like you can walk right into that landscape, like you were on one of the mountain tops looking down.

Chap 3 Artist Review : Johanns Vermeer

Johanns Vermeer is a dutch painter who created " Woman Holding a Balance." The painting is of a woman holding a balance at a table in a dimly lit room. The painting has a quiet ,calm vibe that make you wonder what the woman is thinking about while holding the scale. The woman also appears pregnant , but it cannot be certain. The painting that Vermeer created sends the message that any decision that people make will have some kind of effect in thier lives , positive and negative.

Chap 3 Artist Review : Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo is a Mexican artist who is famous for painting numerous self -portraits throughout her life. These self - portraits reflected her life, emotions and experiences. Kahlo started to paint during a her recovery from a street car accident and went through many surgeries because of it. It was because of her paintings she was able to express herself through her portraits such as "Self -Portrait with Monkeys." In this portrait she is reserved and calm, she also expresses her position as a Mexican woman with the monkeys close to her.

Video potluck!! last week on 9/13

Last weeks lecture was pretty cool, a video blog potluck was a first for me. The food was great , there should more potlucks this semester. Having the class do video blogs was a neat idea but I'm not used to talking to a camera so I'm gonna stick to typing my own blogs. One of the topics that was brought up is "what is art." my thought about that question is that anything and everything is art. Art can be created on purpose and on accident, it can express emotion, ideas and messages. Art comes in different shapes and forms and its all depends how people interpret it.

Last Tuesdays Lecture on 9/6

During the last lecture we discussed about the Lascaux cave in France. The cave was discovered in 1940 by a young teen named Marcel Ravidat. The cave  dates back to 16,000 ya. around the upper Paleolithic era. there depictions of different animals and only a few of people that were supposed to be "vision questers" who have become enlightened. Then discussed the movies the Matrix and Inception and how the main characters are in their own way vision questers and become enlightened and see the world for what it really is. Then got in to the discussion of "what is reality?". I guess there's so many different ways to explain what it is and if what people perceive is actually reality.