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Figure Ground

Ambiguous Figure/Ground

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Obvious Figure/Ground

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• Design an alphabet letter that fits in a rectangular format so that it touches all four sides. The letter must be easily recognized and occupy 50% of the space in the format.

• Only two colors may be used: one for the figure and one for the ground. Any style of upper or lower case letter may be used.

• The negative shapes from this project will be the visual information you use for the next project. • There must be at least five negative shapes.

• This and the next project will be displayed as a set.

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Ambiguous Figure/Ground

Can you tell which color is dominant?

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Negative shapesReconfigured

negative shapesNegative shapes as positive figure

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The top loop is cropped to keep the negative

shapes next to it smaller in order to achieve a

50/50 balance in figure and ground.

This composition is very ambiguous. Can you tell which color is

dominant?

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Balance

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Symmetry Project

• Make a symmetrically balanced collage using only circles, triangles and/or rectangles. The shapes can overlap or be trimmed to make new shapes. Up to four colors may be used. The composition must have a vertical axis of symmetry. Biaxial symmetry may be used.. • Make some of the shapes quite large to increase variety. Try to make all of the colors equally visible, but vary the amount of each to get more variety.

• Try to make all of the colors operate as figure in the design. Also try to make all the colors act as ground so that there is not one background. Use what you learned in the last project to control the figure/ground relationship.

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Asymmetry

It is possible to push the envelope of balance with asymmetry. A small visually interesting object can balance a much large less interesting object.              You can sometimes use nothing to balance something. Negative space has visual interest if used properly. Exact amounts and correct placement are required.

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For this project avoid using the center of anything as a reference for placement.

Asymmetrical Composition Project

Use the same format, kind of shapes and colors from the last project to make a new composition that does not use

symmetry in any way. The image should be well balanced and displayed as a set with the symmetry project. No recognizable subject matter is allowed.

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This is an example of biaxial symmetry -- mirrored left and right with almost the same imagery mirrored top and bottom with some color changes.

Notice that the asymmetrical images have less unity but more variety.

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Proportion/Emphasis Photomontage Project

Make a collage (photomontage) that shows an object

very out of scale(either very large or very small). Make sure that it will be the first thing a viewer will notice when they look at the image. Also determine, and control, what the viewer should see second.

There must be at least two photographic images used: one for the out of scale object, one for the background.

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