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Harvey Wilmeth Analysis

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Walter Ackerman
AD 255
Heather Vickers
11/28/17
The piece of art I choose for my visual analysis paper was the portrait of Harvey D. Wilmeth by Jamie Lee McMahan. This portrait is an oil painting on a cardboard canvas, it can be found in the Thomas S. and Harvey D. Wilmeth Active Learning Center, better known as WALC. Although I could not find the exact date this painting was created, I do know the portrait is based off of a 1940 graduation photo of Harvey Wilmeth. Jamie Lee McMahan is an American portrait artist who attended the University of Tennessee.
Although you would think such a basic portrait could not have that many elements of art, that is far from the truth. This portrait starts off with contoured lines. These contoured lines help clearly outline the subject of the painting. The shape of this painting as a whole is obviously a rectangle since it fits into a rectangular picture frame, but Harvey Wilmeth adds more shape. His head has a circular shape, with some irregularities with his ears sticking out and his boxed …show more content…

Using implied texture, McMahan is able to make his clothing look layered and his hair look extremely lifelike. Color is another element of art that is used in this portrait. It is mainly formed from subtractive/darker colors to create an older feel to the portrait since it is based off of a photo from 1940. Volume and mass are two other key features to this portrait, and since it is a 2D painting it is implied volume and mass. The artist uses shading and cross hatching to make the subject of the painting appear three dimensional. The same thing goes for the volume in this work of art. Does it have actual volume? Obviously not since it is 2D, but though the use of shading and perspective it creates the illusion to the viewer of

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