Example: Example: Color You will be required to identify, to describe, to use formal terminology and to apply your knowledge of form to establish a style. Let’s take one formal characteristic like color to see how it might fit into these categories. (The rubric measures your ability to address ALL relevant formal components of your selected work. Other formal characteristics to consider might include line, shape, mass, volume, depth, perspective, motion, light, and texture. You will also want to examine the overall composition or arrangement of your painting.) Excellent: Color is an essential formal characteristic of the selected work because the artist selected complementary colors, red and green, colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel to create a strong contrast between different parts of the composition and that tension intensifies one's reaction to the work. The colors work against one another and create a sense of compositional imbalance. The color choice is expressive rather than just descriptive. The artist selected these intensely saturated, complementary colors for their formal ability to communicate a sense of energy, tension, and unease to the viewer and this emphasis on the expressive capabilities of color help to identify the artist’s style as expressive. Good: Color is an essential formal characteristic of the selected work because the artist selected complementary colors, red and green, to create a strong contrast between different parts of the composition. The color choice is expressive rather than necessarily just descriptive. The artist selected these colors because they communicate tension and unease to the viewer and this emphasis on the expressive capabilities of color helps to identify the artist’s style as expressive. Acceptable: Color is important in this painting because the artist uses red and green to create a strong contrast between different parts of the composition. This makes the work seem unbalanced. These colors are intense and make the painting more expressive. Weak: The artist uses strong colors, like red and green, in this painting.