Wednesday, 30 November 2011

Design Sources

Principles of design practice for stained glass, 4

Use the everyday visual experience and make interpretations and adaptations. E.g.,
  • draw lead lines on an illustration to make it suitable for stained glass, using the fewest lines possible
  • Use your photographs of interesting subjects and scenes
These may never become useable designs or cartoons, but will increase you abilities to design from the real world toward the abstract.

Make and keep sketches as personal references. These do not need to be finished drawings, just a reminder of the thing(s) that caught your eye. Many artists always carry around a notebook to record these observations. Even if you only make drawings on paper napkins, make a folder to keep these separate sketches together.

Take photos of shapes and interesting images. These can then be used later to develop images.

Make up composite images by using overlays or collage. This helps develop your compositional abilities.

Work on abstraction in your design practice:
  • Study abstract representations. Dissect – decomposition is a popular word - and analyse how the work is put together.
  • Use geometric design as an introduction to abstract design. This forces your attention to structure, balance and colour.
  • Once the distribution of the physical and visual weights is understood, this enables the jump to more free forms of abstraction.

No comments:

Post a Comment