How to Critique an Artwork

Hello art students, this is Mrs. Brand here. Today I'm going to talk to you about art critique. I'm going to describe what an art critique is and then also explain how we will be using art critiques in class when we look at each other's artworks. An art critique is a detailed analysis and assessment of a work of art. During a critique the viewer often expresses a personal opinion about an artwork based on its perceived creativity and how successful the composition is. Feedback is a powerful tool for improving the success of your artworks. When we stop to reflect on our artistic choices we discover new ideas and improvements. Critique is often most important for the person who is making the comments. It can teach you different ways of looking at and thinking about artworks which then can improve the artworks that you create. Here are three art critique tips that we should use when we're looking at one another's artworks. Number one, take your time and look. Spend a few minutes looking at an artwork before deciding on what to say. That way your comments will be thoughtful. Number two, don't use lazy words like nice or cool. Nice, cool, and interesting are lazy words because they don't provide enough detailed feedback for the artist. And number three, be generous with your compliments. Students participating in a critique are taking a big step by putting their work on display for others to talk about. Look for successful aspects of the work and make sure you share those successes with the artist. When we do our art critiques, our art critiques should include two things that the artist did well and one suggestion for the artist to explore. When you discuss your classmate's work be sure to start to start with the positive. Find things that you believe were done well and describe them for the artist in detail. Then think about and describe one aspect of the work or idea that could be explored further. This could be a change that could be made in the work or it could even be an idea for a new project based on what you see in the existing artwork. So let's go ahead and give it a shot with this student artwork. If we take a look at the student artwork we can see that the student used different things that he liked to create a drawn collage that illustrates his personality. Here are some critique sentence starters. Something that really caught my eye was how you created this sunset or sunrise fade of colors in the background. The use of value improves your artwork by showing the shadows underneath the objects that you have drawn. It makes them look three-dimensional. I would like to see more of these shadows perhaps on some of the objects that you haven't included them on. That would maybe unify the drawing to include a lot of three-dimensional effect. So that's a good example of how we can talk about two tips or two things that the student did well and one suggestion to explore in the future. I hope this critique video has helped you and now you should be ready to look at your classmates artworks and give them some thoughtful suggestions. Thank you!