Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Winslow Homers Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) essays

Winslow Homers Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) essays Winslow Homers Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) Winslow Homers Breezing Up, located on the West Main Floor in Gallery 68 of the National Gallery of Arts, perfectly captures the beauty and splendor of nature and innocence. The painting, which was completed after three years of work in 1876, is displayed among the works of other oil painters including additional works by American and naturalist painter Winslow Homer. In this painting, Winslow Homer depicts a man with three boys in a small wooden sail boat that is riding along the choppy waters. At the center of this painting is the stern or rear of the boat. The oldest of the boys is sitting on the far end of the stern with his knees up and his bare feet planted firmly on the deck. Although the subject is directly in front of the viewer, Homer uses a slightly diagonal linear perspective that goes from the rear of the boat to the right and distant horizon. It is this boy, not the man, who is steering the boat almost effortlessly with one hand on the line. His face is turned slightly away from the viewer, yet Homer adds so much detail using line and color to accentuate the boys chin, left cheek and eye. Throughout the artwork, Homers use of lines is only hinted at by the detailed contours of the figures and boats themselves. These detailed features stand out greatly against the thick layers of puffy clouds, painted with thick and loose brush strokes, which linger over the water. The use of expressive lines is also hinted at in Homers ability to recreate curves just as they would appear in nature, such as the shape and form of the rolling waves in the sea and the clouds hovering overhead in the sky. Winslow Homer also uses the technique of line of sight, in which lines are created from the two boys on the left and their father looking to the sail while the boy steering the boat is looking towards the shoreline, their destination. Implied lines may also be app...

Monday, March 2, 2020

Chinese Character Profile for æ©

Chinese Character Profile for æâ€" © æâ€" © (zÇŽo) means early in Chinese. It is often used in morning greetings. Both  Ã¦â€" ©Ã¥ ®â€° (zÇŽo Ä n) and  Ã¦â€" ©Ã¤ ¸Å Ã¥ ¥ ½ (zÇŽo shang hÇŽo) mean good morning. In Cantonese-speaking areas, æâ€" ©Ã¦â„¢ ¨ (zÇŽo chen) is how people say good morning. Sometimes, just a quick  Ã¦â€" © is a colloquial way of saying good morning. Other Chinese words or phrases that include the character æâ€" © usually have to do with the morning or being early. For example,  Ã¦â€" ©Ã© ¥ ­ (zÇŽo fn) or  Ã¦â€" ©Ã© ¤  ( zÇŽo cÄ n) both mean breakfast.æâ€" ©Ã¨ ¡ ° (zÇŽoshuÄ i) and  Ã¦â€" ©Ã¤ º § (zÇŽo chÇŽn) mean premature aging and premature birth respectively.   Radicals The Chinese character æâ€" © (zÇŽo) is made of two components. The top element is æâ€" ¥ (r à ¬), which on its own is the character for sun. But æâ€" ¥Ã‚  is also a radical, called the sun radical or also identified as radical #72. The lower element of the character is  Ã¥  . This looks like the ​modern Chinese character for the number 10,  Ã¥   (s hà ­), but that is not what this element is alluding to. Character Breakdown The symbol Ã¥   is an old form of ç” ² (jiÇŽ). Now,  Ã§â€ ² means â€Å"first† or â€Å"armor.† Thus, æâ€" © is a pictogram of the sun rising over a soldier’s helmet.  Therefore another way of interpreting æâ€" © (zÇŽo) is â€Å"the first sun.†Ã‚   Pronunciation æâ€" © (zÇŽo) is pronounced in the third tone, which is often described as the falling-rising tone. When you pronounce the syllable, make the pitch go down low and then bring it back up high. Mandarin Vocabulary with ZÇŽo Pinyin Characters Meaning ZÇŽo Ä n æâ€" ©Ã¥ ®â€° good morning ZÇŽo fn æâ€" ©Ã© £ ¯ breakfast ZÇŽo shang æâ€" ©Ã¤ ¸Å  early morning ZÇŽo xiÄ n æâ€" ©Ã¥â€¦Ë† previously; before ZÇŽo yÇ  æâ€" ©Ã¥ · ² long ago; for a long time