Learning Digital Design

I spent the first few days of the week reading the second part of Nathan Goldstein’s Design and Composition and planning out my mural on the wall.

Goldstein discusses the idea of line, which defines the boundaries of shapes and conceptualizes elements of the composition. Lines provide structure and form to a work of art. Varying the thickness and curvature of lines allows artists to express the meaning of their work through this “omnipresent element.”

My mural will be composed entirely of lines! String art will likely involve a composition of mostly straight, colored lines. Goldstein states that colored lines are capable of adding volume and animation to a composition. That sense of motion and energy is exactly what I’m going for in my mural.

Additionally, I have begun a set of tutorials for Adobe Illustrator, the digital design tool I will be using to plan my mural out. I am using the ones available on format.com. So far, I’ve learned how to work with shapes and vectors, and I’ve just started a tutorial on layering.

The last thing I did this week was plan out my mural on the wall at school. Using masking tape, I created four ‘boxes’ for where my four mounting boards will be. I measured the dimensions of the composition, including the space between the boards and their sizes. Based on my calculations, each board will need to be 27×32 inches.

Thanks for reading this week!