Form and Composition Process Documentation
Task: Use only black squares to create compositions that illustrate words
Part I: Sketching thumbnails
When I shared my sketches with others, it was interesting to find that there were a lot of similarities and common themes for certain words. For example, fluid compositions had a lot of curves and rigid compositions had a lot of straight lines and right angles.
Part II: Digital iterations
- Create 2 compositions for a word pair using black, white, and a single color.
For these compositions, I chose to illustrate the words clumsy and graceful. When I hear the word clumsy, I think of awkward and uncoordinated. In my mind, the word clumsy gives me the picture of something toppling over. But I also felt that this idea could be conveyed abstractly by breaking away from a pattern and tried experimenting with it. I chose this word pair to be the one to have a different color because the difference in color helps to further emphasize the break in pattern.
I chose gray because having a color that is not too far off from black better helps convey the idea of graceful. The black squares gradually decrease in size as they move away from the center, and also lighten in shade. The composition I have here differs from the one I sketched because I decided I didn’t need additional squares to convey the idea of gracefulness. I was satisfied with this composition and didn’t iterate on it any further.
However, after receiving some feedback, I felt that the composition for clumsy wasn’t illustrating the word strongly enough. I wanted to stick with the idea of breaking away from a pattern, so I modified my original composition by breaking the same pattern in different, more exaggerated ways.
I experimented with rotating the squares at different angles, changing their sizes, and adjusting their positions. In the end, I chose to go with the last (rightmost) composition, which has the most disruptions in the pattern of black squares. I purposely shifted the position of the squares so that they no longer form a perfectly straight horizontal line.
2. Using a different word pair, create 2 compositions in black and white.
For these compositions, I chose to illustrate the words rigid and fluid. I definitely had the hardest time creating a composition for rigid. Rigid implies little room for movement or flexibility. I felt that this would be best conveyed by using a few big squares without much rotation, since horizontal and vertical straight lines feel like good abstract representations of rigidity. But I had trouble thinking of how to place these squares in creative ways. Fluid was easier for me to work with, because I immediately thought of placing different sized squares at different rotations in a curve to make them seem like they were flowing somewhere.
I ended up choosing the last composition I made, where the squares gradually decrease in size from top to bottom and are all rotated the same direction.
Here, I started out creating digital versions of my sketches for rigid but wasn’t satisfied with them, so I tried to see how I could otherwise position a few squares to illustrate rigid. Stacking upright squares don’t allow for much movement, so I felt it would be good for showing rigidity. In the final compositions for both rigid and fluid, I utilized the Rule of Thirds.
3. One composition that illustrates a reversible figure/ground relationship (50% black, 50% white).
I immediately thought of a checkerboard when thinking about reversible compositions, so I wanted to do a variation on it by experimenting with different sizes and altered positions.
