Ribbon Art Analysis

By Sophie

When I look at my art piece, I notice the very dark and very light spaces. I also see the word

‘tear’ spelled out. I would probably call my art piece ‘tear’ to keep it simple. The term ‘tear’ is

spelled on the paper by pieces of paper that look like they’re standing on their side. The paper

letters look torn on the sides. They have big dark shadows underneath them. It is the lightest in

the middle of the drawing and dark around the edges. It is the darkest on the top left and right

corners of the paper and in the shadows. The subject matter is the word. It is the thing that draws

your attention and what the piece is about. An element of design I used is value. The principle of

design I used was contrast. I used pencils and paper to create this art piece.

Value is used in the dark and light from the shading. The dark and light contrast each other, too. I

used the entire range of values from 0% to around 100%. I used white, light grey, dark grey, and

black in this piece. The different hues help everything to work together. The mostly black and

grey background makes the letters stand out.

I think that the artwork’s message would have to do with how tear has two meanings. It could

mean ‘tear’ like ‘a tear drop of water from your eyes.’ It could also mean ‘tear’ like ‘to tear a

paper.’ That’s why I tore the edges of the letters. The message that I think people could get from

this would be “don’t tear over tears,” which could go in two ways. When somebody looks at my

piece, I think that they would think about the double meaning of the word and notice the light

and dark.
I think that the overall art piece is okay. Some of the letters don’t look right and I could have

worked on blending the pencil marks better. I was successful in using the entire range of values.

Nest time I would work on making it more 3D-looking. The mark I think I would receive for this

work is a 3. I did some things okay, but I think I could have done a better job. I could have also

made it look more like the picture. Lots of the shading and angles are off, though it is similar.