Course Title: ART111 2-D Design
ART125 FYS (Freshman and Fall /Only)
Term: Fall, January and Spring
Course Description
COURSE DESCRIPTION (Catalog):
An introduction to 2D concepts of visual organization through the study of composition, lines, shape, value, figure-ground relationships, texture, spatial illusion, and color theory
COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
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Students will be able to understand the elements and principles of design
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Students will be able to visually explore and problem solve
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Students will be able to evaluate art critically utilizing a visual vocabulary in both oral and written formats.
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Students will be able to successfully document their design projects in a digital format.
COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES:
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Students will create multiple projects that implement the various elements of line, shape, value, texture, figure-ground relationships, perspective, composition, pattern, and color. Culminating in a final work that incorporates a variety of the elements.
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Students will produce numerous sketches as a way to work through design exploration, and outline finished projects.
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Students will produce written reviews/ critiques of professional gallery exhibits and participate in oral classroom critiques with proper use of visual vocabulary.
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Students will submit a digital portfolio on a USB drive.
Final Digital Portfolio:
All art and design students are required to establish and maintain a Digital Portfolio in which all artwork created during your time at Converse is documented. Documentation techniques will be covered in the class and students expected to document all drawings created in the course. The work and portfolio will be reviewed and graded for accuracy and quality.
Exercise #1 Experimentation with Line.
Part A: In your sketchbooks, use any material at your disposal to experiment with making non-objective lines. Start doing automatic drawing. Then be more thoughtful. Make quick lines, slow lines, thick lines, thin lines, create textures with lines, play with hatching, cross-hatching, make a line out of dots, experiment, play with different materials at your disposal. After a little while I will start guiding you with saying different qualities of lines. Be free and experimental.
Part B:
Get new scratch paper: fold it in half twice, to create 4 separate boxes. Look back to your vocabulary of lines you created in the first exercise. Pick interesting parts of your experimentation with lines to create four linear compositions inspired by the 4 concepts listed below. Each concept should live in it’s own box.
Concepts
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Near & Distant
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Ordered
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Explosive
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Calm
Project #1: 200 Lines
Make a composition indicating space non-objectively using only 200 lines (avoid drawing from life directly or anything representational). Consider the definition of the word “line.” Look it up in a dictionary, an art book, a geometry text.
Materials needed:
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Ruler
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Pencil
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Black pen/marker/ink
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Bristol paper
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Final Project must be BLACK INK, PEN/MARKER on Bristol Paper
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Exercise #2 Composition, Unity, Texture.
Part A. Exploring new terrain: discovering a variety of Textures, inventing new Marks, and unifying those textures
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Go on a hunt. Explore our room, the hallway & outdoors, identifying & collecting 20 different textures. Are you viewing it from the micro level or macro? Invent a new MARK for each new TEXTURE. Use artist pen/markers/ink pen & pencil in sketchbook.
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On a piece of sketchbook paper, delineate 12 spaces (diagonal, vertical, horizontal, spiral/circular etc.). This will be the UNITY part of your composition: organizing your textural motifs in a GRID-like system.
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Choose 12 different TEXTURES and assign them to their own space. Set your textures in motion, moving them across their space allowing them to repeat and grow, creating a PATTERN of evolving marks.
Part B. VALUE Scale
Create one value scale inside your sketchbook: 2” tall and 9” wide. Each value should be 1”wide X 2”tall. Move from light to dark gray, excluding pure white and black.
Tip: use any texture you’ve collected to create varying degrees of darkness. Use Artist Pen / Marker / Ink.
Project #2 Texture, Composition and Value.
Create a texturally rich piece inspired by your overall design analysis of an art historical example. Each student will be given a different art historical representational reference image. You will then analyze the composition you are given, looking for basic design elements and overall gestalt. You will break down the representational composition into simple shapes and forms, analyzing the overall design and creating a non-representational analysis of the image you were given. Look for focal points, areas of movement, repetition of elements, continuity, grouping, etc. and then translate those elements into a non-representational design of basic shapes.
Transfer your non-representational composition of basic shapes onto a piece of Bristol paper. You will then fill in these shapes with textures. Look back to your original art historical example and find areas of varying value throughout the composition. Then, translate these values into texture and/or patterns. Create a new composition inspired by the value and overall design of your art historical example with varying degrees of textural value.
Your final piece should be a unified composition of textures while using variety to keep the viewer engaged.
Materials and Requirements
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11 x 14” Bristol Paper
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At least 5 Textures and/or patterns
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At least 4 Values
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Pencils or Black artist pen/marker OR ink & pen/brush
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There should be no blank or open space
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Allow for overlap and look for a combination of organic and geometric shapes
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Exercise #3 Positive and Negative Space:
Part A. Go on a Search... for Negative & Positive Shapes & Spaces
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Bring your sketchbook with you & identify 2 geometric and 2 organic/biomorphic shapes. Draw them out & label each one.
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Using a viewfinder, zoom in on an object, select a portion of it that provides a dynamic composition and create two 5”x 5” black and white compositions.
Project #3 Figure Ground Relationships
CREATE A DESIGN WITH ANY EFFECTIVE SPATIAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE ELEMENTS. You could use a grid, containment, abstract arrangements, traditional use of foreground and distance, etc. Figure silhouettes can be turned in any direction on the picture plane.
Be sure to work with negative space as well as positive space. Patterns can be drawn in negative space as well as in the silhouettes.
After collecting examples of figures in action positions:
• Trace or draw or enlarge or reduce them to have silhouettes to work with.
• Any figure can be repeated, cropped, reflected, changed in size, etc.
• Use silhouettes AND negative space shapes cut from black paper, cut from large areas of magazine text, drawn with marker, or done with ink
• Do not use actual magazine pictures of people
• Do not use areas of color
• Figures can be cropped, overlapped, diminished in size, etc.
• Use as many silhouettes as needed to create an effective design
Materials: Black construction paper, areas of text cut from magazines, marker and black ink. Use text as shapes of value and pattern.
Project #4 Space and Perspective:
Create a collage that defies our known perception of scale, perspective or proportion.
Exercise #5
In preparation for color week, create a color wheel, be sure to include the primary, secondary and tertiary colors.
Project #6: Monochromatic Warm and Cool.
Complete two monochromatic images, 1 warm and 1 cool. In each piece create a harmonious composition using a variety of tints, tones and shades of a single hue. The single hue can be modified by adding black, white, or gray to the hue or by adding a small amount of its complement -in this case a small amount of orange.
Choose one color and apply it to one of the shapes in your composition. Modify that color in various ways, as described above, for the remaining shapes, to create a harmonious composition. In both the examples illustrated the primary color is the basis of all color used and is a unifying factor. Variety is created by modifying to different degrees the purity or intensity (saturation) of the primary hue.
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Come to class with a picture that you took yourself (8inx8in or larger) that demonstrates the use of background, middle ground, and foreground consider the composition; avoid having a main subject right in the middle.
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Please use at least 10 different values.
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Values must be isolated
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Values must be opaque
Project #7: High Key/ Low Key Contrast
HUE refers to the name of a specific color (red, green, violet, etc.) Distinguishing one form from another by hue is the most basic and easily understood contrast.
DIRECTIONS:
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Using a variety of primary, secondary and tertiary colors, create two 8”x 8”harmonious compositions to illustrate this concept (do not use the same hue more than once).
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Make one composition “high-key” or all light values and the other “low-key” all dark values
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Keep in mind that color has value. Warm colors are naturally lighter than cool colors and therefore will push forward, while cool colors may recede back.
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Come to class with a picture that you took yourself (8inx8in or larger) that demonstrates the use of background, middle ground, and foreground consider the composition; avoid having a main subject right in the middle OR create your own abstract composition using various shapes and forms similar to what you find below.
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Please use at least 6 different hues.
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Values must be isolated
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Values must be opaque
Project #8: Extension Contrast
One of the most important aspects of contrast by extension is the ability of one color to be greatly intensified because of the dominance by area of a dissimilar surrounding color. In a general sense extension refers to the relative strength or power of hues, but creating dominance or equality of color in a composition depends on arrangement and placement of color.
DIRECTIONS:
Assign the smallest area in your design to a primary or secondary color. Fill in the remaining shapes with tints, tones and shades of a contrasting hue (think warm and cool or complimentary combinations) to create a harmonious composition. In the examples illustrated the orange on the left and red on the right command more dominance given their space allotment but do not overbalance the surrounding hues that play a supportive and unifying factor. Additional use of either color might jeopardize harmony.
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Come to class with a picture that you took yourself (8inx8in or larger) that demonstrates the use of background, middle ground, and foreground consider the composition; avoid having a main subject right in the middle OR create your own composition using various shapes and forms.
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Please use at least 6 different values not including your single contrasting hue.
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Must have a white (taped off) boarder
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Values must be isolated
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Values must be opaque
Project #9: Simultaneous Contrast
SIMULTANEOUS CONTRAST is the effect colors have upon each other in a composition. This is most noticeable when gray tones are surrounded by, or in close proximity to colors of significantly greater intensity (saturation). For example a neutral gray will appear bluish when surrounded by intense orange.
DIRECTIONS:
Mix one neutral gray tone, which should appear at least twice in your composition, creating the illusion of two different grays, depending on your choice of surrounding brighter colors.
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Mix a light and dark warm color
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Mix a light and dark cool color
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Paint these four stripes of color so that all touch onto an 8”x8” piece of Bristol paper (light cool, dark cool, light warm, dark warm)
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Mix a neutral gray
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Paint two gray squares that overlap the warm and cool sections on your paper.
Project # 10: Collage “Home”
PART I: Project Plan
Turn in 3-4 thumbnail sketches and individual meeting with me.
Start writing in your sketchbook a “stream of consciousness” writing entry about what comes to your mind when you think of the word “home”. What memories and experiences come to mind? What images come to mind? Describe these images and/or sketch them out.
Sketch out composition ideas, jot down words, phrases, moods, ideas you want to evoke.
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Is home in the present or the past? Do you consider the place you live now home, or do you associate home with past memories of childhood and growing up?
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What role does nostalgia play?
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Is a home still a home if no one lives in it?
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How would the concept home differ if you were: the president? in prison? a hermit? a nomad? homeless?
Part II: Artist Statement- A paragraph that discusses the following:
What you are doing:
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In plain language, show us sketches
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What artists inspire you?
Why you are doing it:
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Show us examples of your sources for inspiration
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Show/ tell us your story behind your thought process
How are you doing it?
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Show/tell us about your material choices
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Why did you pick the materials that you did?
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Do they have any symbolic meaning?
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Show/tell us about your process
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Using the elements of design provide the viewer with a formal analysis of your final project
Discuss the outcomes of the piece:
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Was it successful?
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Do you think you could have done things differently?
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Did anything surprise/ challenge you?
Project #10: “Home” Collage.
For this project, you will create a multi-layered collage of actual &/or imagined interpretations of “home.” Your collage can imply objective space/reality, non-objective space/abstract reality or a combination of the two.
Contemplate the word “home.” Conjure up all of the positive/negative, personal/public, and mixed feelings you associate with this word. Consider your so-called real home vs. idealized home. Consider unexpected meanings of the word home that might come to mind.
Your final project for 2D Design will be a series of 3 pieces that thematically and visually relate OR one piece larger than 18”x24”. Centered around the theme “home” the materials, and processes developed in this project are entirely of your design.
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Project #11: Website
Construct a website using one of the platforms that we discussed. This website will need to be maintained and updated during your time here at Converse (and later as a professional artist!). This website will serve as your introduction, beyond social media, to the art/design world; an awareness of one’s self in the greater scheme of things. It should include a well written statement, bio, CV/Resume, an image of self (in some form or fashion), and obviously, your work! It may also include links to social media and/or a self-maintained e-commerce account. A chance to generate ongoing sales in order to afford further materials/supplies, as well as create anticipation, if used correctly.
