Moving the Eye through 2-D Design

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Description

 

An overview of the visual arts fundamentals, Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design provides a step-by-step approach to understanding what causes us to look at a painting, photograph, or any two-dimensional media and what is needed to maintain visual interest. This volume introduces a goal-oriented method that applies aspects of line, shape, value, and color directly to moving the viewer's eye to and through a composition. With this method, artists learn to incorporate feeling into the creative process from the outset rather than leaving it as a subjective afterthought. Equally applicable to the fine arts, applied arts, and digital media, Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design provides a simple and comprehensive methodology through which artists can create dynamic art. 

INTRODUCTION 

VISUAL DYNAMICS

LINE

SHAPE

VALUE AND DEPTH

VISUAL INTEREST

COLOR

FEELING

COLOR SYSTEMS

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• ART
• Cultural Studies
• General
• General officer
• Essays

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 27 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841504391
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design
Moving the Eye Through 2-D Design A Visual Primer
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First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol. BS16 3JG, UK
First published in tile USA in 2011 by Intellect, The university of Chicago Press, 14Z7 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted. in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written perrmission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All illustrations credited with name only were created by students. Illustrations without credits were created by the author.
Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Danielle Styles Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire, UK
ISBN 978-1-84150-363-9 / EISBN 978-84150-439-1
Printed and bound by Cambrian Printers, Aberystwyth, UK.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Visual Dynamics
Chapter 2: Line
Chapter 3: Shape
Chapter 4: Value and Depth
Chapter 5: Visual Interest
Chapter 6: Colour
Chapter 7: Feeling
Chapter 8: Colour Systems
Introduction
I don t quite remember when I began to teach using the method that I have described in this book. I know that it has developed incrementally over the past fifteen years. Since 1990 I have taught at a number of Philadelphia area art institutions, instructing students in drawing, painting (both watercolour and experimental), installation art and two-dimensional design.
By the time my daughter was born in 2001, I was regularly teaching a first-year college course on the basic elements of two-dimensional design. At the introductory level, the visual arts are typically separated into three categories - drawing, two-dimensional design, and three-dimensional design or sculpture. Two-dimensional design, the focus of this book, is the study of the basic elements - line, shape, value, texture, motion, depth and colour. These are the components of any artwork created on a flat surface such as a page or canvas. In two-dimensional design you learn how to create the basic elements and how their relationships to each other and to the picture plane, affect the composition s feeling or meaning.
For example, if an image of a tiger is rendered realistically, photographically or in a simplified manner as in a logo, the tiger will be perceived differently in each version. And the tiger s relationship to the other elements, whether it be alone against a green background, crouching at the top of a composition or one of many tigers moving across the page, will each affect the composition s feeling or meaning. Is the tiger ferocious, meek or majestic? Generally, it is not just one element but the combination of many elements and how they relate to each other and to the picture plane that evoke feeling.
Any two-dimensional composition or design - a photograph, painting, drawing, magazine or web page - is dependent on the ability to create and control these various relationships. And in order to understand the complexity of these relationships, you must understand the individual elements - line, shape, value, texture, motion, depth and colour.
Typically, most first-year courses focus on one element at a time. For instance, students learn process and vocabulary of line, then move on to shape. To ensure that each element is discussed, courses often amount to a brief introduction to the fundamental skills and the concepts behind them.
For example, with line, students are often taught how to make lines - straight and curved, thin and thick - using various tools such as pencils (hard to soft) and pens (markers, technical and ruling). Much time and energy is spent learning the process of creating painterly lines, evenly spaced lines, and lines that are crisp and mechanical. This approach develops the hand skills inherent in freehand and mechanical mark-making. However, too little time is devoted to understanding the complex relationships between the basic elements, which affect how a composition is perceived. So when students are required to apply lines to their own work, they typically do not have a clear understanding of how to proceed. The students revert back to making art as they had done in the past and their work does not progress.
Understanding and developing these skills is important, but there hasn t been an easy-to-understand and widely accepted approach to connect these skills to each other and to the art-making process as a whole. Beyond teaching a work ethic inherent in the acquisition of these hand skills, what are we doing with line? How do you use line to clarify a composition s feeling or meaning?
In many university and college art programmes, the basic elements are taught to students who are interested in a wide variety of art practices - painting, graphic design, industrial design, photography, film-making, illustration and printmaking, to name a few. In addition, first-year college students have various skill sets. Some are proficient in the hand skills required of drawing and painting, and some are better acquainted with photography and film-making. So I wondered: how do these hand skills help a student to become a better graphic designer when they could use a computer to produce a crisp, mechanical line more efficiently? How does line, for example, pertain to photography? What must each student know about the basics to guarantee success in their various future endeavors?
I was determined to connect what I was teaching directly to the process of making art. I wanted my students to learn the basic skills and concepts in order to build a clear understanding of and expression in art. It became obvious to me that I would have to clarify the individual elements and simplify how the elements related to each other and to the composition as a whole.
This struggle to clarify what I was teaching as well as engage the various interests of my students came at the same time as I was learning to care for my newborn daughter. Anyone who has had children knows that your understanding of time changes. Days passed without the usual arrangement of dividing day from night. As my wife and I both worked, our days were long and our nights seemed to be parcelled out into hourly segments - feeding schedules, diaper changes and dealing with various ailments. With a lack of sleep, days folded into nights and our weeks simply passed by in this soup of repetition. My wife and I were told to keep it simple and remember three things: when the baby is crying check to see if she is hungry; if not does her diaper need changing? Or does she need to burp? Strange as it sounds, when you have little sleep remembering these three things proves nearly impossible. Did you try burping the baby? No. I forgot.
All the while I struggled to clarify for my students the basic elements of design. How were they going to remember all of the various elements and nuances when asked to create art? How were they going to remember the many components of two-dimensional design if I couldn t even remember three things - feed, diaper and burp?
Over time, I began to simplify my method of teaching by asking one simple question: how do you get someone s attention visually? For me, the answer was visual dynamics, or contrast, motion and noise. These are the three visual elements that capture the viewer s attention. Visual dynamics enabled me to connect directly the basic elements of 2-D design to a single, unifying goal: moving the eye.
It is my belief that to be successful visually, an artist must firstly get the viewer s attention and secondly must control how the viewer perceives a composition. In other words, to get someone to look at your work and to understand a composition you must control how the viewer s eye moves to and through it. This is accomplished by using the simple concept of visual dynamics - contrast, motion and noise. Visual dynamics is the quickest and most dependable way to move the eye to and through a composition. And every basic element of design can be used to create and control visual dynamics. For example, line is not addressed as a separate entity but as an element to create contrast, motion and noise. When you add other basic elements to line such as shape, value and colour, each additional element is another tool that provides greater control over a composition s visual dynamics - the level of contrast, the speed and direction of motion, and the type of noise. While the basic skills are developed, the focus remains on how each element relates to visual dynamics and to the composition as a whole. As each new element builds on the previous one, the art-making process becomes easier to understand. And, by focusing on the concept of moving the eye, the fundamental skills are no longer separate from each other or the art-making process. Instead, from the very beginning, the fundamental skills join together and clarify this process. The goal and the process remain simple, consistent and easy to remember. As a result, everything that is created - from an initial sketch to a finished design, or from a painting to a magazine layout-can utilize this same approach.
However, there is one more element that must be included: feeling. The introduction of feeling at this initial stage is invaluable. Artists often talk about feeling in the visual arts. But feeling is a very complex topic. It is difficult to qualify and difficult to verbalize. Many artists know intuitively that feeling must be included with the basic principles, yet are puzzled as to how it should be addressed. And most often, feeling is presented as an afterthought, if at all. But, just like the basic elements, feeling is integral to the design process. Does a composition have a joyous or sombre feeling? Or, as I mentioned earlier, can you create an image of a tiger and