CyberArts Assignment: Romanticism

Lately, in CyberArts, we've been studying Romanticism, an art form that existed in the second half of the 18th century. It was prominently in Europe and emphasized drama and emotion in artworks. It focused on high contrast, composition, line, the majesty of untamed nature, emotions like horror, terror, and awe, and mythologies. The assignment was to create either a collage or a dry-point print (etching on a sheet of plexiglass, filling it with water-soluble ink, then pressing it on paper with a printing press), and make it have a Romanticism theme. I chose to do a dry-point print that focused on the majesty of nature and how small humans are in comparison.


The process work took a while because I was striving to make it look realistic and that was difficult to do in regards to line drawing. The composition I chose was diagonal because I wanted the viewer's eyes to be directed to where the tiny human in the artwork's eyes are looking towards. The final piece shows a small man standing on a bunch of rocks overlooking a lake surrounded by forest and mountains. The biggest problem I had (this affected my prints) was that there was so much detail that I didn't press hard enough in some areas. This caused the ink to rub off too much in some parts of the artwork and made it look a bit odd. The first print I did didn't turn out too bad. The second print I tried in colour, and the ink did not stick. The black ink transfered onto the paper but the blue I used for the sky and the green I used for the forest did not. The third print I did turned out not bad except parts were still hard to see. I used black and grey instead of colour.