How to analyse an artist's work:

Analysing an artist's work means studying the elements that make up an artwork.

*Always remember to use your own words so that you are expressing what you think and what
emotions the particular artwork evokes in you!

Task: Observe this masterpiece of Vincent Van Gogh „Starry Night” and answer the following
questions:

1) Form:

 What colours does the artist use?

 What kind of shapes and forms can you find?

2) Context:

 What do you know about the artist?

 How does the work relate to other art of the time?

3) Content:

 What is happening?

 What message does it communicate?

4) Mood:

 How does the work make you feel?

 Does the colour, texture, form or theme of the work affect your mood?

 Does the work create an atmosphere?

  Describing a Work of Art

 When we describe something, we want to give the reader/listener a good

idea of what it looks like. When we describe a work of art we also want to
describe its style and the mood that it portrays, as well as express our
opinion.
 1) Introduction: Introduce the work of art. Include its name and the date it
was created. 
........... was painted/made by ............. in ............. .
 The type of work of art:
 sculpture, drawing, oil, painting; sketch, portrait, watercolour, landscape, still
life...
 The materials:
oil (on wood/ on canvas), watercolour, charcoal, ink, 
clay, wood, plastic, marble, stone, granite, iron, steel, copper, bronze...  
It's made of/on.... 
 Talk about lines, tone, texture, shape, movement, scale contrast, colour.
IT'S A/AN (OPINION + SIZE + AGE + SHAPE + COLOUR) + NOUN 
 It shows ......... Its /their shape/s is/are simple/flat/curved/ bright/ straight...
Its colours are bright/cheerful/dull/rough/lovely...
Its texture is rough/smooth/soft/sandy/curved...
 2) Describe the style . 
Its style is shiny/modern/traditional/abstract/realistic... . 
The painting/scupture is representational/realistic/abstract/etc
 3) What is where?
In the foreground/background you can see ...
In the foreground/background there is ...
In the middle/centre there are ...
At the top/At the bottom there is ...
On the left/right there are ...
Behind/In front of ... you can see ...
Between ... there is ...
 3) Who is doing what?
Here you describe the persons in the work of art or you say what is happening
just now. Use the Present Continuous 
 4) What I think about the picture. What you think the artist was trying to
express.
It seems as if ...
The lady seems to ...
Maybe ...
I think ...
…. might be a symbol of ...
The atmosphere is peaceful/depressing/lively/ 
I (don't) like the picture because ...
It makes me think of ...
  From Green to White, oil, Yves Tanguy, 1954

SAMPLE PAINTING DESCRIPTION:

This paper will be a visual description of From Green to
White  ,  an oil painting made by the Surrealist artist
Yves Tanguy in 1954.

The picture describes an imaginary place using tiny,

barely visible brushstrokes, so that the surface of the
painting is almost perfectly smooth.  What appears to
be a strange city, naturalistically shaded to suggest
space, fills the bottom of the composition.  The rest
of From Green to White  looks like sky. 

The lower part of this section contains dark, wavy,

horizontal bands, with streaks of red, green, pink, and
blue.  Above that is an area of white, slightly blue. 
Streaks of bright white within it give the impression of
being light, or reflections from a block melted ice.  These streaks fade out about halfway up
the picture, leaving what appears to be a blue sky with a few white clouds in it.
 The strange city at the bottom of the composition consists of many rounded shapes that
suggest oddly proportioned structures made out of grey rock: cylinders, cubes, etc.  One at
the left edge of the picture is the tallest element.  A flat low form in the middle, which
extends across nearly a third of the width of the picture, has a blue roof with what look like
strange waves and a single orange oval on it.  These are the only things that are not some
kind of grey color.  To the left of this structure is a tower with grey-green vertical tubes along
its sides.  Window-like openings go around it.  To the right is the largest structure of them
all.  Between it and the blue roofed form are 8-10 tall, dark, flat spires.  A thin grey cylinder
rises along the right edge of the composition.

The title, From Green to White, gives no hint of what Tanguy meant to represent in this
painting.  The picture itself also provides no clues.  The shapes and forms that are so
carefully described do not suggest an interpretation that makes sense of what we see. 
Therefore, the work remains a mystery, a precisely detailed view of an imaginary world we
can never know. It may mean going from the green nature of trees and forests  to the white
rock of the skyscrapers of the city.