Shapes are in everything you see. Using lines, you can describe recognizable shapes. Look around to find ovals, rectangles, squares, polygons, etc. The goal is to become aware that our visual perception system processes the world as a collage of lines, shape, and form.
- Find a suitable scene. Choose a scene that shows the ground and the ceiling or sky. Hint: It’s easiest to scout out places with architectural regularity or simple shapes first. Avoid skewing the camera. A head-on camera view is recommended.
- Take a picture of the scene. This could be an interior (floor to ceiling) or exterior (ground to sky) space.
- Look carefully. Decompose the scene into simple shapes (squares, circles, lines, etc). Try the squinting at the scene to grab generalized contours and regions.
- Sketch out those shapes in your notebook. Use the pencil and thumb method to help you with drawing proportions and angles.
- Draw a second version using even fewer shapes than you used before.
- Show your work to someone who is not in this class. What was their reaction? Could they see the shapes in your scene?
- Post in your blog the original photo and your converted sketch iterations. Upload a post containing the 3 photos:
- Original photo of your scene
- The first translation of your scene into shapes
- A second iteration with the most reduced number of shapes
- Write a 500+ words blog post accompanying your photos. Where is this scene? Why did you choose this scene? What shapes dominate? In translating to shapes, which features did you struggle with? What was the easiest thing about this translation?