HUMN 330 Week 3 Art Creation & Reflection – Sculpture, Painting, or Drawing

Sample Answer

Art Creation and Reflection Essay

One of the great ways through which art is more meaningful is its expressive qualities, which are sometimes hard to put into words. In this assignment, I have selected Vincent van Gogh’s art piece – Starry Night, as a reference for producing my drawing. Based on Starry Night’s artistic expression, I decided to take advantage of its thematic leitmotivs, hope, and the beauty of nature to create my drawing named Hope in the Heat. The distinction between the cooler night scene by Van Gogh and my brighter depiction of a seemingly barren territory essentially expresses hope in times of despair.

Inspiration Piece

• Title: Starry Night
• Artist: Vincent van Gogh
• Year: 1889
• Place of Origin: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France

Figure 1 Starry Night by van Gogh

The famed post-impressionist Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night after he took residence in an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In Lin’s (2019) account, the painting portrays a stormy night scene with a calm village, indicating Van Gogh’s internal struggle and contemplation for a brighter future. The light emitted from the stars and the whirling clouds depict that life is not as easy as most people want it to be, especially when viewed from a complex lens. In some way, one can seem to find optimism and calm in the painting, even though Van Gogh had some problems with mental illness and wanted to realize a calm outcome. Thus, it indicates that there can be beauty and hope in great distress.

My Art Piece

• Title: Hope in the Heat
• Medium: Crayon on paper

Figure 2 Hope in the Heat

While Van Gogh’s Night provides a veneer of calm and comfort, my work, Hope in the Heat, captures the scorching conditions of a desert under the sun. It paints out three hills, each with its backdrop under a clear sky and a burning sun on the right side. However, the mere bright-colored pieces of green grasses located at the lower portion of the painting depict hope of a rain shower and a more favorable climate (Prior, 2019). This same sentiment of optimism is maintained in Starry Night, as the stars represent light and hope in the darkness.

While conceiving this piece of art, I intended to depict the experience of being surrounded by a dry environment but have hope that nature will restore the conditions. The hills depicted in brown have a sense of dryness, in contrast to the green grass below, which symbolizes hope and faith. For the textured effect, I used crayons to demonstrate the sun’s heat and the growing grass’s coolness.

Connection Between the Two Pieces

There are a lot of thematic similarities between Starry Night and Hope in the Heat. The two works consider the possibility of seeking hope where there is none, or at least where it may not be easily seen. As seen in Starry Night, the night might seem daunting or intimidating, but the stars are a source of light (Lin, 2019). Likewise, in Hope in the Heat, there is a burning sun, but at the base of hills, green grass hints at the possibility of rain and new life.
While the main idea of both pieces remains the same, the scope and feeling the drawings evoke differ significantly.

Van Gogh employed oil paints to develop Starry Night to attain voluminous, spiral movements that give the impression of change. In comparison, the simplicity of my crayon choice achieves a more innocent and robust effect that contrasts sharply with the complexity of my concept, which is conveyed without any intermediaries (Říhová, 2019). While the two mediums are technically distinct, they are efficient means of relaying information in their way.

However, when comparing the formal design elements, Starry Night concentrates more on line and color to evoke emotion. As Jain et al. (2022) aptly state, the rapidly moving lines in the drawing lend a dynamic, dreamlike feel to the painting. On the other hand, Hope in the Heat depicts the lines simply, aiming to represent the landscape using a contrast between the dry browns of hills and the vivid green of the grass to stress the notion of hope. Whereas Starry Night is profound and multidimensional, my piece is comparatively simplistic, emphasizing the portrayal of hope in nature.

For the viewers, the medium heavily influences the tone of each piece. The oil paints used in Starry Night can offer depth, opacity, and texture, giving the painting a touch of emphasis and motion (Petersen, 2022). On the other hand, my crayon drawing has a much quieter tone, but its main focus also engages the theme of hope amid struggle. While Van Gogh’s work may inspire thoughts of wonder or reflection, my artwork explicitly desires to leave the viewers with the recollection of the value of faith amid adversity.

Conclusion

This creative process taught me more about artists’ tools to express emotion and meaning in their artwork. While my crayon drawing cannot be compared to Van Gogh’s intricate oil painting in terms of complexity, they are linked by a fundamental theme – hope and nature. Hope in the Heat conveys the concept of renewal/change in even, or especially during, difficult and adverse circumstances. Like Starry Night by Van Gogh, my creation depicts hope amid darkness as an appeal to look for the silver lining even in the worst situation.

References

• Jain, V., Zaydfudim, V., & Podboy, A. (2022). Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Abdomen.” Gastroenterology. https //doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2022.04.053
• Lin, H. (2019). Starry Nights Whitman, Epilepsy, and Van Gogh. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 36(2/3), 189–201. https //doi.org/10.13008/0737-0679.2322
• Petersen, S. (2022). The night albums Visibility and the ephemeral photograph. Leonardo, 109–111. https //doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02325
• Prior, R. W. (2019). Artistic significance, creativity, and innovation using art as research. Springer EBooks, 1–6. https //doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2262-4_64-1
• Říhová, K. (2019). The process of artwork interpretation. Research in Arts and Education, 2019(2), 566–574. https //doi.org/10.54916/rae.118997