Two Dimensional Design PROCEDURE °°°   Assignment Study a painting carefully. Practice analyzing the linear and geometric structure of the painting to understand how the work is designed. Try to forget the names of the things you are seeing and focus on the underlying structure or the abstract composition. Gericault's Raft of the Medusa click to enlarge Composition Analysis First Study the images on the right. On a sheet of paper, practice diagraming the course your eye takes as it travels around the painting taking in all the information. Start by drawing a rectangle roughly the same proportions as the painting. Then put your pencil down about where your eye first enters the painting. Make your pencil follow your eye's movement. Chart the course through at least seven or eight main points of focus. Each time you do this you may create a different diagram. Poussin's Muse with Poet click to enlarge Second Practice diagraming the dominant horizontal and vertical movements in the painting. Look for implied lines—lines that are indicated by points of contrast or psychological interest, and actual lines. Discover the grid that holds the imagery together in a "whole" design. Fragonnard's The Swing click to enlarge Third Practice identifying repeated shapes, such as ovals, triangles or other basic geometric shapes. Diagram their location, size and frequency. Rubens' Descent from the Cross click to enlarge Fourth Each time you study the painting you may create a different diagram. There are several possible compositional structures. Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of le Grand Jatte click to enlarge Pay attention to how the experience of the work is sustained inside the edges of the rectangle, how the artist controls our looking by balancing points of focus within a hierarchy. If your eye runs off the rectangle or stops in any one location, the composition may not be unified or balanced, or very interesting. Of course all the works presented here are perfect. Vermeer's Woman with Scale click to enlarge   Project, part one Poussin's Shepherds in Arcadia click to enlarge Once you have a feel for the diagraming process, pick three works from this web page. Click them to get the bigger image. Then copy them by dragging the image to a file on the desktop or control-click and choose copy to a file. You may need to create a file on the desktop before you do this. Delacroix's Death of Sardanopolus click to enlarge Open Adobe Illustrator. Create a new document, 8.5" x 11". Once the page is open, go to file>place and find the file with your images. Place one on the page. With the black arrow you can adjust the size of the image so that ten will fit on a page. Then copy and paste ten copies of one image in a grid structure on the page Ruben's Elevation of the Cross click to enlarge Select all ten images by holding down the shift key while you select the images. The go to the Object menu at the top and then to lock to fix the images on the page. This will make it easier to work on top of the images. Use the pencil and the pen tools to draw diagrams on top of the images. Make the lines thick, at least 5 point lines are helpful. Go to the Stroke palette on the right side of the desktop and adjust the weight of the stroke to 5 points. Use a black line or a white line depending on how dark the imagery is. Van Eyck's Marriage of Arnolfini click to enlarge Vermeer's The Milkmaid click to enlarge Do five different diagrams charting the path your eye takes as you look at the painting. Vary the kind of line from jagged to smoothly curving. Try to be honest about where your eye travels. Poussin's Rianaldo and Armida click to enlarge Do three diagrams of the different, repeated basic geometric shapes you discover in the painting. Do two diagram of horizontal and vertical lines or thrusts that are apparent in the work. Each time you diagram try to find the essential structure of the composition. The essential structure may be different each time you look at it but the more you do it the closer you get to a thorough understanding of the design. Complete the ten diagrams for each of the three images taken from the web page. You should spend about one hour for each page of diagrams. Remember that these are diagrams. Do not try to draw every detail in the painting. Print each page on the color laser printer.   Project, part two You will create an integrated design from each of the three images. You will have three separate designs when you are finished with part two. From each page of diagrams copy three (include only one diagram of eye movement). Paste them along with a copy of the painting, onto a new document page. Set them so that the rectangles exactly overlap and the diagrams overlap. Enlarge the rectangle so that the horizontal dimension is no smaller than seven inches. Go here for further instructions>>   Project, part three Up to now you have been doing research. The final part of this project is a collage based on a historical work of art. Pick one of your designs and replicate it in collage, using assorted found papers, adhesives, some paint or charcoal and chalk on matt board or illustration board or some heavy card stock or board. The smallest dimension of your design should be no smaller than fifteen inches. The rectangle should be proportionate to the original image. Work primarily with black, white and a variety of greys. Since you are to collage with found materials, some color may be allowed in the found papers. I will provide some tracing paper. You are to try to incorporate some transparency, that is, the interlacing of forms from back to front in your collage. Mondrian's Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caming Picasso's Guernica Picasso's Collage with Still Life (Suze) Back to the examples<<