FOG Tuesday Collage Exercise

Well, this is our final Principle of Design in our series of Elements and Principles of Design. We've enjoyed the time spent on these collages over the past months and have learned a lot about design in the process. The Principle was Depth and Space.

Unless we work in 3 dimensions, work on a canvas is only 2 dimensional. We can only convey space and depth with visual cues.

There are a number of ways that you can do this incorporating many of the Element and Principles of Design that we have done over the past months.

Warm Up Collage
Design Principle - Depth and Space

  

The most common ways are:

·        Overlapping objects to suggest depth.

·        Creating shadows.

·        Size of your subject matter, sometimes in conjunction with a known object.

·        Colour can suggest depth, where warm colours appear to advance and cool colours recede.

·        Depth of field. If your object is out of focus it seems that it is further away.

·        Where an object is on your page or canvas. Towards the bottom they will appear larger and smaller towards the top.

·        Use perspective to indicate depth or distance.

Stay tuned in 2015 to a new series of warm up exercises that we will be working on during FOG Tuesdays.

FOG Tuesday - Collage Exercise

This month’s collage exercise was based on the Design Principle – Motion/Movement.

This is not referring to kinesthetic art, which is actually movable art such as clothing, or a mobile, but it refers to the techniques that imply movement, or art work that illustrates movement.

Movement or Motion:

Warm Up Collages
Design Principle - Motion/Movement

• can be made with lines and streaks around a figure or shape
• can be implied through blurring the outlines of an element
• can be achieved by the blending of colours at the edges

For example:

• a figure of a runner leaning forward, or a tree bent at an angle may indicate wind.
• a variation in the size of elements, moving from small to large, similar a bouncing ball
• by overlapping elements, like a time lapse photograph, movement is implied

Movement can also refer to the way a viewer’s eye moves around the art piece. This is created by the artist arranging the elements to encourage the eye to move around the entire art work. This can be enhanced by using curved forms that keep the eye moving in a circular direction.

FOG TUESDAY

This month’s collage exercise was based on the first of the Design Principles – FOCAL POINT.

A focal point in an art piece can be created in a number of ways:

Warm Up Collages - Design Principle - FOCAL POINT

• By the use of a textural contrast to the rest of the surrounding elements
• By creating open space in the midst of clutter
• By inserting a realistic element in the middle of abstract objects
• By providing a vertical element amidst horizontal lines
• By placing a large element in the midst of several small elements
• By using colour to draw the eye, for example complimentary colours, an area of red with lots of surrounding green, will create a focal point
• By changing the style of pattern

It’s interesting to note that most fine art, collage or mixed media pieces have a focal point, but many traditional and modern style quilts do not. Quilts (unless art or landscape quilts, or patterns such as Medallion and Lone Star) are based on a repeat of same style blocks in regular settings.