Parallel Lines Project

Lily King

Class began with a discussion on the Principles of Design. The principles consist of the theories of: unity, similarity, variety, movement, scale, dominance, economy and closure. From there, students made thumbnail sketches containing a limited number of squares, circles, half circles and rectangles. After sketching out the best on large paper, parallel lines were employed to delineate the various shapes from one another and the background. The objective was to work with line/ weight variations.

Lily's drawing above exhibits strong contrasting tonalities developed by the closeness of the lines and varying the value of the line. By changing scale, overlapping shapes and employing cast shadows, Lily has suggested a deep sense of space. The wavering line applied with accenting along its path creates a sense atmospheric texture.

Dana DeLuca

By keeping the shapes relatively close in size and placing larger shapes higher on the picture plane, Dana has created a shallow or limited sense of space. Like Lily's drawing, Dana's exhibits strong contrasting values that bring clarity to the composition. Notice how Dana has balanced the composition by implying a triangle starting at the tilted square in the bottom right moving up to the large, dark circle over to the half circle in the upper right and moving the "eye" back down to the tilted square. Remember that similarity works through shapes as well as values. So you can move from one type of shape to another if they share the same value or color and texture for that matter.