Growing

Mystery Painting Description

by Rebecca and Orlie

Mystery Painting

recreated by our Walter Hays partners

In the top fourth of the picture there are four rectangles that are small and next to each other. They cover the middle 4/6 of the top of the picture. The one closest to the left side is a yellowy-orange color. The next one is coral. Then there is a rectangle the color of an ocean on a foggy day. The last one in that section is a pig pink. Right underneath the rectangle the color of an ocean on a foggy day, there is a bright orange rectangle just a little bit longer than that blue rectangle. It also has a width that is shorter. On the left of that orange one, almost touching it, there is another rectangle that is bright orange. It is a little longer than the other bright orange one and has the same width. Under the first bright orange rectangle, there is a coral one that is almost a square and goes vertically. The coral one also touches the second bright orange rectangle. The coral rectangle does not touch the bottom of the page. To the right of the coral rectangle there is a medium-blue rectangle that is as long as the first bright orange rectangle but goes horizontally. It does not touch the side of the paper. Off the right end of that blue box, a pig pink rectangle goes up and touches corners with the other pink one. To the left of the second small coral box, there is another horizontal rectangle the color of an ocean on a foggy day. That rectangle does not touch the side of the page. Under the coral rectangle and the two blue rectangles, there is a very long yellowish-green rectangle. Even though it is long, it does not touch the sides of the paper. It does touch the bottom of the page, though. Off the left side of the yellowish-green rectangle (in the left-most 1/6 of the picture), there is a medium blue rectangle going vertically. It takes up the right 2/3 of that section. It touches the bottom of the page, but doesn't reach the top. It is about as long as the yellowish-green rectangle, just a little longer. The space that is still empty should be colored dark green (the background is green).

When we first looked at our mystery painting the feeling that we thought of right away was happy. It made us think of something we had done well or had accomplished. We liked the feeling it gave us.

Our mystery painting is called "Growing" and it was painted by Josef Albers. It was painted in 1940. The original painting was oil on Masonite. The painting is 24 by 26 3/4 inches. You can find the painting "Growing" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Our partners did really well. The colors would have been almost all perfect if only our partners had added a little more yellow to the orange rectangle and some blue to the gray rectangles. All of the shapes are just like we said. Our partners have most of the arrangement right. They have the first four rectangles in the right places. They also put the big greenish-yellow rectangle at the bottom in the right place. All of the others are very close. Most of the sizes of the rectangles are close but some of them could be smaller, bigger, or taller.

We could have described some of the colors differently. For example, we could have described "an ocean on a foggy day" as something else. We think that our partners got mostly confused when we described where the different rectangles were. We could have made it clearer by explaining it in a different way. We think that our partners made an excellent recreation of our painting even though they both aren't exactly the same.