Saturday, May 12, 2012

Altered Book Lesson 7, The Elements of Design

In this lesson we learned about the five elements of design, line, form and shape, space, texture and colour.  Our homework is to create a page showing each of these elements.

Line


On this page I have shown "line" in three different ways.  Firstly the zig-zag line that the skier has left in the snow.  Secondly the line shape of the trees , along the bottom of the branches wavy and along the top straight, this is somewhat hidden by the gesso snow.  Thirdly the line of trees rising up from the bottom left of the page to the top right.

Form and Shape 


On this page I have illustrated shape in the background, I have reflected the three colours of the baubles to give the page unity,  it is a flat surface with no depth or thickness.  The element of design Form I have illustrated with the round and grape shaped baubles.  Though they are just photographs cut from a magazine the 3-D geometric effect has been achieved by the reflections of light shinning from the glass.

Space


This is a difficult one to see from the photograph, I have used two overlapping sheets of paper the distant one is of a bundt tin full of chocolate truffles, the overlapping sheet is on the left and is a picture of fruits and ribbon.  I die cut some flowers out of the top layer before sticking down.  The die cut holes in the paper are shown by the negative space that surrounds them and are themselves two-dimensional spaces, having no depth.  I tried to highlight the area along the edges of the shape.  I made the flowers from the cut out shapes of progressively smaller size and wound them through the page to show distance.

If you squint your eyes you can see a three dimensional shape in the bundt tin, this is achieved by colour hues gradually getting darker as it receeds into the picture against a background that becomes lighter.

Texture


For this page I used a piece of corrugated cardboard as the background which I wiped with a damp piece of paper towel to make removing just the top layer in places to leave the ridged center piece exposed in some areas.  I painted this to varying degrees with gesso and stamped a Christmas stamp with brown Stazon down the right hand side.  The word "December" and the number 25 were also stamped with Stazon brown ink and I used some foam stamps that give a worn look to add to the texture.  A chipboard swirl covered with gesso and a single ply napkin that wrinkled on contact, three handmade material/ribbon flowers with pearls, two pearl flowers, a strip of lace and nylon wires threaded with pearls all contribute to different textures on the page. 


I have to tell you that gesso on distressed corrugated cardboard is my favourite background to work on,

7 comments:

Bleubeard and Elizabeth said...

I can tell so much went into this homework assignment. I was quickly impressed with the three examples of "line" and my heart began racing with glee as I read the explanation of how you created each page, what it signified to you, and how it related to and explained a portion of the lesson. BRILLIANT.

I have to agree that the corrugated cardboard and gesso background is one of my favorites also! Thanks for playing and for posting this excellently executed assignment.

Craftymoose Crafts said...

Your pages are just beautiful! It is evident that you really mastered these principles.

I'm intrigued with creating on corregated cardboard now for my aceos...do you work wet into the gesso & use it as glue & background?

Thanks for sharing your beautiful work!

SandeeNC said...

Your pages are awesome, you did such a good job! I especially love the line page and the texture page, just lovely! waving hi from the hills of North Carolina :)

BJ said...

Oh your corrugated card page is absolutely divine - the others are great too but I have fallen in love with this page. BJ

elle said...

Wow, you have done such an excellent job. Line is exquisite and texture is luscious. I want to try this cardboard and gesso. Thanks for the detailed sharing.

Carol Rigby said...

My favourite is your texture page with the corrugated card and the gesso. The stamped images and embellishments make for a beautiful overall effect.

Sherry said...

You've got it all covered there Paula! I thought your 'line' page was my favourite, until I saw your 'texture' one - WOW, it's beautiful!

Thanks for coming to see mine too xx