Classification means judging other people's art pieces and giving them ranks. Of course classing is a judgement call itself, for example, does a person have the right to judge other people's creations?
Is it right to put different pieces of art in order when they might represent totally different things? There is, and will always be, people who need a rank on what they do because it's part of the human nature. Without ranks and difference between the importance of things nothing feels special compared to something else and eventually things lose their value.
Classification is sharing opinions about art. The ranks that a classing person gives do not mean the ultimate truth. They are only views from a single person and art is something too big to be judged by one, or even hundred people, no matter how much they knew. Art consists of views from every artist and there will always be more than one opinion, so classification shouldn't be taken too seriously. It's giving advices, not talking trash. It's an opinion, not a judgement.
2. Classifiers
What does it take to be a classifier? A person doesn't necessarily need any experience in creating art. A classifier has eye to details, he/she seeks different kind of things from art that are common with that particular type of creation and compares them to others. Personal things should never get on way when giving rank to some other's work, the work and the personal business should be keepen separated.
3. Methods
Different classifiers use their own methods when they are giving ranks, but I'm going to tell about mine and some common things that are being searched from an image.
When watching an image, people always get the first feeling that directs their thoughts when they start searching for separated details. I try to keep this feeling away and concentrate more to those details, the whole image as one piece is a plus / minus in the end of my ranking. Going throught the certain things I search from image can take just a moment, but it's part of the process that I also try to think how this one thing could be done better if there is something to work on or what has gone wrong if something bothers. It's important to be able to give advices while classing a work because the classified person needs always a thing or two to work on. Without goals and with empty, plain critic artist soon looses interest and decreasing the number of artists is the exact opposite on what a classifier is supposed to do.
There is some things that every classifier searches from image. These are light and shades, depth, text, focal point and background. Style of the signature isn't really one from the list, but the whole image consists of it.
Light and shade includes the light source, the brightness of the image and the size and direction of the light and shades. These few things help with giving an image more realistic look. When working on it, it doesn't really seem like much of point to put more effort, but when the image is ready, lightning is surprisingly easy to put as a minus if it's not made well. For example, if an image includes sun, the artist should concentrate in the sun rays and the direction of them so he/she is able to make the light in right size as well as the shades. The shade should also come in right angle.
Depth is another factor that gives image the realistic look. It's pretty difficult to create correctly and same time the ways to do so are simple. Depth can be created by blurring the objects in distance and sharpen objects that are closer, by decreasing the brightness of the colours in far away objects and by making the size differences between objects close and far more realistic.
Many say that text is the most difficult part of an art piece, for example a signature. Mostly this is true. Text includes many things that should be thought of, the size should fit the rest of the image, the colours should comfort the image, to bring the text out and still keep it in the background and the placement and fonts have so huge variety it's often difficult to pick a fitting one. The main rule is that the text should look good and still not draw attention.
Focal point often means a character or other single object. Focal point is the main thing in the image, the one that the rest of the image should bring out. With focal it's often quite easy to pick a place, which usually is in the middle and the size compared to background should be taken in consideration. The focal point has usually either more or brighter (or both) colours than the rest of the image.
Background, sometimes as difficult to find as a fitting text. Things like size, fitting theme and colour scheme are crucial and finding a good background image if the artist is using a render is often taking much more than just a few minutes. Background is also a very important factor in the image, it usually tells what the image is supposed to present better than the focal or anything else in the image.
Own thoughts
I've done classification for just a short time, but I'm glad if I've been able to make at least some things clear and to answer in some questions. The thoughts and things in the article are my own and I've talked throught my experience, not using any others' words. Thank you for reading,
