Geometry, Proportions and Sub-Divisions Illuminant Pre-Painting Drawing Concepts and Methods

LCD IIProfessor Philip Ayers

Class works with compass and ruler: Complete Golden-section, Root 2 Rectangle, and a sub-divided square into 5 equal vertical vertical parts.Homework: Draw in Illustrator and Print OR BY HAND on heavy paper a design that starts with one of the objects explored in class or comes from the handout where you are constructing further facets based on symmetrical sub-division of the objects using the techniques explored in class.

Underpainting Drawing must be in area and size and proportional one of the following: 10.5X17 (golden-section which must be reduced to 9.73 inches X 15.75 approx. to fit the tab loid size paper, others examples must be printed on two sheets or glued tabloid. Examples 11X 16, 12X15, 13X14, 13.5X13. 5 Printed on two sheets of tabloid which are glued together or taped on back or printed to larger paper .

After finishing your Illustrator design, Export as “Adobe PDF For Print”. You must choose the size of the paper in this process. Refer to LMS--> Foundation Book Project --> Printing your Book or email me.

Output: Print your design.PDF on the Foundation Inkjet printer on the third floor of the main building, or in the labs in the Engineering building, You may print in black and white on heavy card stock or heavy inkjet paper.Also print one copy on 8.5X11 paper laser printer, check “resize to fit”.

Tutorials are available every Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30-9 pm on the Third floor of the Main

Building in the Foundation computer labs. (Check with foundation office for time to be sure)

Illustrator is available to all students at the Computer labs on campus.

Illustrator can be “rented” by the month for less than $10.

Please rent it by next class, download it and install it.

Divided into 5Divided into 9

Division into 3 equal parts

Extended square by 1/2

Divided into 2

Divided by 4

Diagonals

Diagonal to 1/2

Divided into 6

Measurement: Division of square by even and odd numbers

LCD II, Fall 08, P. Ayers Instructor

Polygons

Each new step is arrived at by adding the two previous steps together.

The Golden Section

Fibonacci’s Ratio: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ..,

1

12

3

5

8

13

GOLDEN RECTANGLE

STEP 1. STEP 2. “Whirling Square”

STEP 3.

Golden Section

r1 r2 r3 r4 r5

Root 2, 3, 4, ..Rectangle

Root 2, 3, 4, ..Rectangle

Geometry Lesson

Egyptian System of proportions was based on square-grid.

Cube

One

Cube

Tw

o

Hyp

ercu

be

Free

form

Hyp

ercu

be C

ompo

sitio

n w

ithin

Gol

den

Rect

angl

e

HyperCube

Hypercube

How the Shaku �ts into the KEN grid:

The “Shaku” is a traditional Japanese unit of measurement, roughly equilavent to a “foot”.

Orginally, the “KEN” was the space between 2 columns. Later it was developed into a standard unit of measurement to size a room. It is generally 6X6 Shakus.

KEN

1 Shaku

1/2 KEN

The KEN and the Shaku

Unit of measure and Proportional system

Source: Modi�ed from unknown student at Pratt.

Design based on Geometry. Geometric composition of points, lines, vectors, planes, arcs and circles.Materials: pencil, computer- Illustrator of some vector program. Finish with Gouache paint.Matrix Design: 1-Start with building your designs with resulting matrix, by using the methods illustrated in the handouts and explored in class. First choose the proportional system you want to use to build your frame, whether it be the Golden Section, Fibonacci spiril, the Ken, the Square, Grid, or some proportional object that you will sub-divide beginning with symmetry. You may also build a new object for instance, by using systematic addition based on the symmetry of that original object. After initial exploration with the compass and ruler, choose an object type and draw it, or generate an original one, and explore it thoroughly by building an array of intersecting lines based on sub-division of the form starting with symmetric divisions. In the end you will want to play off of this symmetrical structure in an intuitive way as well, as counterpoint to the possibility of complete symmetrical geometry, albeit complex. Important** Once you have built your matrix you will notice if you try to look at the whole design at once, that planes start to

unfold and shift from one to another visually throughout the whole design. It’s this visual amibiguity that you want to capitalize on and explore within the palette of your illuminant study. 2-Color will become the most important counterpoint to the geometric structure. Working from your proportional palette study of night-colored illumination, create a composition-design to express the central focus of the experience: ambient light color, reflected, direct light, color-light progressions and the gradation of color-light, broken progressions of light and color-mixing. Primary to this is the use of middle mixture/ transparency, organized in a way that should feel atmosheric and volumetric (volume color). Also something to try...create volumetric forms. It’s important to try and bring to the creation of your design, your intuition and aesthetic feelings related to this experience of light and color in the dark light context. Other important design issues to explore: rhythm and scale (dominate/subdominate/subordinate). Also again here we want to bring an actual personal focus to the work.