Art Appreciation- Principles of Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Art Appreciation- Principles of Design - Essay Example Constable continued to study and copy the work of his predecessors for as long as he lived, constantly measuring their interpretations of the natural world against his own experience of it. His main interest was scenes from nature, despite earning money painting portraits for the rich. Although largely ignored by the English art community in his lifetime, Wilson (n.d.) reports â€Å" The Hay Wain and View on the Stour near Dedham went to the Parisian dealer Arrowsmith in 1824 and created a lively, if short-lived, interest in France.† Since his death the true value of Constable’s has been recognized by all of the art community. ‘Stoke-by-Nayland’ is a dark figure emerging on a path from a shady forest on the right, with the village of Stoke-by-Nayland located on the right. A partially cloudy sky covers the right sky above the village with the left side having a smaller visible sky in proportion with the whole painting. The scale and proportion used allows Constable to make the forest seem in the forefront and the village farther away. The directional forces pull the eyes toward the figure and forest first. Even the brushstrokes seem to be coming from the right. The emphasis is on the mysterious forest. The subordination is the village in the background. The contrast between the colors is obvious with the white clouds and dark greens of the forest. The two most important principles are scale and proportion and contrasts. These two principles define ‘Stoke-by-Nayland’. Constable uses scale and proportion to create a forefront nature scene with a figure emerging and a background village. Constable often used the technique common at the time of sketching actual nature scenes before going back to the studio to paint (Wilson n.d.). This would entail making the sketch using scale and proportion, and then transferring the scale and proportion onto a larger canvas. However Constable accomplished this, he did an