Essay 1
Brittney Herndon
Karen Scheafer
Humanities 1020 02Z
January 30, 2013
Preindustrial
The picture of the scene design for a production of ‘Shakespeare’s Hamlet’ uses form and color to create a sense of mysteriousness.
Form creates trees, people and structures to the left of a pathway. These forms are dark in color with subtle outlines to distinguish them from one another. The arrangement of the forms in the picture determines what they are but not what they lead to. The forms of people are towards the bottom of the picture on or near a path. The tree forms are located above the people and with more clarity. The artist uses variation in creating the trees because there is more than one form and they vary in size. Surrounding the upper part of the path and above the tree forms, structures are visible.
The artist uses cool hues with shading to create the mysteriousness in the picture. There are blues and grays along with the black and whites. The black and white hues shade the forms. A sun or a moon at the top of the picture creates the shade. The “light” from the object casts down on the rest of the picture. There are even rays of “light” evident by the increasing width of the lighter area starting from the object moving down.
The artist creates mystery in the picture using cool hues and varying forms.
224 words
Essay 2
Brittney Herndon
Karen Scheafer
Humanities 1020 02Z
February 17, 2013
“Brass Cat” Versus “Black Cat”
The artists display the different personalities of cats in their sculptures, the “Brass Cat” and the “Black Cat”. Composition of the sculptures differs vastly from one another by the use of mass, lines, color and texture.
The solid mass of the “Black Cat” gives it a serious appearance. The “Brass Cat” has a lighter mass that gives it a playful look. The line of the “Black Cat” is vertical and the line of the “Brass Cat” is horizontal. Unlike the airy, playfulness of the material used to create the “Brass Cat”, the “Black Cat” is solid and has a shine that is created when a solid material is subtracted and polished.
The “Brass Cat” is visually less dense than the “Black Cat” because of the artist’s use of negative space. In the “Black Cat” our eye is directed to the face of the cat using a closed form because the artist does not use extremities. The horizontal line of the “Brass Cat” creates an open form. The viewer looks toward what the cat could be playing with. The “Brass Cat” has extremities created in a pounce or playful position. The “Black Cat” sculpture is black and the “Brass Cat” sculpture is a golden or light brown hue. The darker hue is cold and uninviting. The brown hue is warm and open. The “Brass Cat” has a choppy texture and the “Black Cat” has a very smooth texture.
Although both sculptures are of cats, the “Brass Cat” and the “Black Cat” differ from each other in their compositions. The “Brass Cat” has a lighter playful feel and the “Black Cat” has a solid serious feel to it.
276 words
Essay 3
Brittney Herndon
Karen Scheafer
Humanities 1020 02Z
March 10, 2013
Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
The poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost is an organized, rhythmic lyric poem. The poem’s meter is trochaic tetrameter and the sound structure is rhymed. The rhythm compliments a masculine rhyme.
The poem diverts from the strict sonnet structure of fourteen lines because it is comprised of sixteen lines although two are inset. Each of the sixteen lines is composed of four feet and every other syllable is unstressed. The four feet and alternately stressed syllables create a trochaic tertameter. The structured rhyme scheme is aaba bb cb cc dc dddd. The first stanza includes a third line that ends with a word that rhymes with the second stanza. The third stanza’s last words combine the second and third stanza’s last words by rhyming. Through the last two stanzas, the rhyming continues to build on one another until the last stanza. The last stanza ends the poem and does not include a rhyme with the previous stanzas. All of the rhyming words use single-syllable vowels for a masculine rhyme.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost uses a structured rhyming rhythm in a lyrical poetry that is similar to a sonnet in its’ number of lines.
204 words
Essay 4
Brittney Herndon
Karen Scheafer
Humanities 1020 02Z
April 10, 2013
Making a Dramatic Point
The narrative motion picture Pay It Forward directed by Mimi Leder is a suspenseful and unpredictable film. It uses visual imagery with a varying viewpoint and crosscutting to create a dramatic story.
There is limited camera movement throughout the film. Focus is on the words and actions of the characters so the majority of the shots are tightly framed and close-up. The characters are presented in a visually dramatic fashion to heighten the viewer’s sense of relationship to the characters. For example, one of the characters is severely burned. The viewer understands the pain the character describes in one scene by seeing the scars. The film uses both natural and artificial lighting to enhance the shots. The viewpoint is varied to appeal to both men and women viewers. Women relate to the hard working mom who cares about her son’s performance in school. Men relate more to the drinking and appeal of a scantily dressed woman.
The film uses crosscutting to develop the story. A boy is given an assignment in class at the beginning of the film. As a result of the assignment, the boy “pays it forward” by doing a good deed for three people. As the plot develops, the shots juxtaposed the good deeds the boys does for these characters. In the end, all three deeds come full circle and the final shots are about the boy.
An extremely intense and complex film, Pay It Forward makes uses excellent visual imagery including lighting. The use of close-up, tightly framed shots and camera movements makes it easy to follow the dramatic stories of each of the deeds. All of these elements create an intense film that the viewer is able to follow and relate to.
287 words