Shape Composition

      For this project, we had to make 4 distinct designs by cutting up a 4" square and using all the pieces. We had to make two nonobjective, one abstract, and one design that still retained the essence of the square that we had cut up and then reassembled. We had to completely destroy the square so that the viewer couldn't realize that that's what we had originally worked from.

     This was my first design that I made. When I started to think about the different ways that I could destroy the 4” square that I was working with I started thinking about the branches on a tree. I was at home, and it was a beautiful fall day outside and I took that inspiration and began cutting. Originally when I started laying out the pieces for this abstract design, I was thinking of a tree during fall losing its leaves. I wanted the leaves to be blowing in the breeze to connect the piece and creatively move the viewer’s eye throughout the work. It wasn’t until I started gluing down the pieces meant to be leaves that I realized that it looked like it was the outline of a tree full of leaves in spring. I felt very accomplished with this work that I had achieved so much more than I had originally started out with. 

     I used abutting with the ground pieces and mutual tension a lot through the leaves and frame of the tree to avoid scattershot.

  This was the first nonobjective design that I made. I wanted to completely destroy the square without having the viewer know that’s what I cut my pieces from, so I cut a lot of organic, curved lines. Techniques that I used to avoid scattershot are abutting, mutual tension, and interlocking. I used interlocking in a unique way as to not put pieces that fit together right next to each other, but rather put them in different areas of the piece for the viewer to see the unity and give them the chance for their brains to put it all together. This wasn’t my favorite nonobjective; however, I feel it was a successful piece overall.

Line Composition

"The best way to learn what a line can do is to experiment with it. You must take a line and move it around on a page, discovering for yourself what happens as its position changes."

For this non-objective project, I had to measure and cut my bristol paper into an 8'' x 10'' format. (Which is actually a lot easier said than done when using an X-acto knife.) Next we had to cut black strips of construction paper and arrange them in a unique and visually exciting way that developed interest in how the ground was divided. This project concentrated mainly on line and the figure-ground relationship.

For the first piece posted, I could only use diagonal lines. I remember cutting out tons of strips of paper and rearranging them multiple times, and then cutting out more of different thickness and length that I felt would work. I ended up not using a lot that I had cut out simply because I felt that I had accomplished an exciting design without overloading it with line. I liked the figure-ground relationship that I had created and how there was more ground apposed to black figure. I also constantly turned the piece around over and over again trying to figure out the best way to view it. 

The second posted piece only used curved, fluid, and organic lines. This is actually the second piece that I had made, and I felt it was more successful than my first try. With the first one I used my x-acto knife to cut out the curved strips of black construction paper. After I had glued my pieces down using rubber cement I realized that it wasn't what I had hoped. So for this one I cut the pieces out using scissors, which actually worked out a lot better for me. With this one again I viewed it from all sides to find the best point of view. Overall, I was very pleased with this project.