Working More on the Essay and Further Reading

Issues with word count

After completing my note taking and reading Framed Ink, I began to write about what I had learnt in reading, but I realised after only writing a part of what I had learnt, my literature portion had reached 1,220 words, the word limit for this section is 800, and I still had to add in a reference to another piece of literature.

I needed to thin out the document, but first, I thought it would be best to look at a third source, even if I do not write as much on it, I wanted to gather what I needed so I could properly structure and thin out this section. 

The word count for the Literature Review

The total word count

I thought it would be best to use an online article and make some notes on some more basic fundamentals that can be useful in making an illustration more interesting.

It was difficult to find an online article by an artist rather than a company, I wanted an artist's own thoughts then I could better understand who was writing. I found an article titled "7 Ways To Give Your Painting Dimension" by Doug Swinton, this article sounded like it would have some useful information, so I made notes on it. I have included those notes below.

Notes on - 7 Ways To Give Your Painting Dimension

In this article, Swinton covers seven areas that can improve a painting; value, temperature, chroma, linear perspective, “The Big 3 Shape Changers”, detail/texture and foreground interest.

Swinton explains that the differences between value range are greater when something is nearer, and when further away, the difference in values becomes closer and less intense. With temperature he explains, “Warm tones come forward and cool tones recede.” meaning colours tend to cool as they move further into the distance. So both value and temperature are impacted by distance of objects within a piece. 

Similar can be said for chroma, “Bright colours come forward and dull colours recede.” colours need to appear more ‘dull’ to give the feeling that they are further away.

When going over linear perspective he explains that vertical lines appear more forward and horizontal lined move more into the background. Angles become more horizontal as the move into the background of a piece.

Within the section named “The Big 3 Shape Changers”, Swinton describes how shape, size and layering can all be used to give depth to a piece. 

Foreground interest is adding elements into the background to add the “illusion of distance”, it also makes a piece more visually interesting by adding this depth.

When going over detail and texture, once again he explains that details are more visible when an object is closer and less detailed as they go into the distance.

Completing the literature review portion

After finding another source of information to mention in the literature review, I worked on making it more concise and being choosy on what I mention in it. I still have all my notes from all sources saved in case I want to change anything down the line.

The word count for the literature review now

I am happy I have been able to get the literature review to be more concise, there is still 10% allowance either side of the word limit for the essay so I can always tweak if I need to. 

Next steps

Now I am in a good place with the literature review I can start working on the contextual review. For this, I will need to go to and discuss 5 events and relate them to my topic. I can go to physical places like art galleries and museums, I can also watch online presentations and videos for my topic.