Coziness in Art
I think everyone can agree that being cozy is pretty great, but how can this feeling of
coziness be depicted within art and media? Many different artists and creatives have been able
to depict this, such as Van Gogh and Studio Ghibli. It is fairly easy to show happiness or
sadness in art, but coziness is not as easy. I can paint a painting of a puppy being sad, and
people viewing the painting will feel sad, but when I try to make the viewer feel cozy, I have to
use a little more nuance in my approach. I believe you can elicit this feeling through two things:
common items/activities correlated to comfort and specific color pairings.
The “easiest” way to go about eliciting the feeling of comfort is depicting items and activities that
are usually correlated with comfort. Items/activities like sweaters, reading a book under a
blanket, and drinking warm tea can all elicit this feeling of comfort. The best recent example of
this would be the 24/7 livestream, “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax and study to." The visuals
include a girl in a sweater studying as a light rain falls outside her window. A cat also sits idly by
watching outside as the girl quietly studies while chill music plays. All of these aspects put
together create a visually comfortable environment that the viewer can feel. I can go on and on
about this specifically, but this part should be a given.
Usage of color is the second way, and it is fairly harder to get this part right compared to just
putting common items in. To create the feeling of comfort, you have to use colors that don't
clash with each other and are not too harsh. Soft yellow lights surrounded by dark blues are
frequently used in art pieces that can be perceived as “comfy." The painting Cafe Terrace at
Night by Van Gogh is quite possibly my favorite example of this. The patrons at the cafe are
engulfed in yellow, sitting around chatting while the night surrounds them with various shades of
blue. Maybe it is just me, but if this painting was set in the day, I feel like it would lose the cozy
vibe that it is giving off. Don't get me wrong, daytime can still give off comfortable feelings, but
painting scenes during the night time makes it so much more easy to elicit the feeling of
coziness.
Coziness within art intrigues me greatly because it takes a decent amount of skill and creativity
to figure out ways to implement it within your work. Sometimes the subject of the painting can
carry this feeling, but sometimes you will have to put some work in with colors to really make it
pop. Hopefully you can now go out and create “cozy” paintings with the little knowledge I
shared.
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