Activity #2: Re-Write

In 1967, Jacob Lawrence created “Daybreak – A Time to Rest,” a tempera painted on hardboard. Lawrence uses a number of elements, including line, color and shape throughout the entire painting. There is one horizontal line featured to indicate the horizon, yet the majority of lines used are contours, which are the boundaries percieved of 3 dimmensional forms (83). These lines are shown between the different objects painted. Lawrence uses lines, which are paths traced by a moving point (82), in a different way to create the orange bug located on the blade of grass towards the bottom of the painting, creatively composing diagonal lines to show the accuracy of how thin and long this particular bug is. There are also a number of organic shapes, which are irregular shapes evoking the living forms of nature (88), featured in this painting. These shapes include the 3 humans lying on the ground, but the that stands out the most are the feet in the middle of the painting, mainly because of its size and color. With few of the shapes being sort of geometric (the toes similar to circles), the majority of the feet and the rest of the organic shapes reveal the nature that’s inherent in the painting. The entire painting consists mostly of tertiary colors, products of a mixture of a primary color and an adjacent secondary color (95). The most dominant tertiary color is the yellow-orange dulled with blue violet used for the sand, which is the ground, or the background to demonstrate the low intensity, or the dullness, of the color as well as the painting.

David Smith uses these same elements in his “Untitled” gelatin silver print created during 1932-1935 in contrasting ways to "Daybreak". The majority of all the lines found in this work are both horizontal and vertical lines, which are used create the window frame as well as the wall tiles. Like "Daybreak", contour lines are also seen in this photograph to demonstrate the 3 dimensions of the heater shown towards bottom center of the work as well as the dark, shadowed shape that takes up the entire photo. Smith, unlike Lawrence, includes primarily geometric shapes in this work, including the many squares and rectangles seen in the ground, also known as negative shapes (89), as well as in the window frame. There is also one circle seen towards the right of the photograph which seems to be apart of the figure, which is the shape we focus on and that stands out from the ground, also known as the positive shape of the work (89) . Smith uses different colors to portray the same dullness Lawrence used in the ground of his painting. Primarily in composed of a grayscale, an indication that this work also contains low intensity, Smith uses the dullness and low intensity of color to deliver a somber and peaceful feeling.

Both paintings use the same to elements in similar and contrasting ways, yet they are used in effective and powerful ways to deliver the same soft and peaceful feeling of the work.