Design Exercises

How often do you make time to strengthen your design skills?

Last week, after our Fibervision meeting, some of us stayed to practice some design exercises. Here are a couple of the pages from the "Shape Splitting" exercise. Basically, you chose a simple shape and cut it in as many ways as you can think of. Do this 8-10 times and evaluate your final shapes. I decided to use Sue's beautiful journal to store my design exercises.

Here's a Continuous Line, Self Portrait that I drew tonight. Do you like it?

In Santa Barbara, we have an art and cultural event called 1st Thursday. I attend many art openings, some fantastic, some not so good (IMHO). Tonight I attended one that was a lot of fun because you got to create your own art. It was held at the Perch Gallery and featured student art from the Ridley Tree Education Center. The continuous line, self portrait is one of the lessons they do with their students. You look into a mirror, and without ever looking at you paper, you draw a continuous line, self portrait. Then you color it with water soluble crayons.

Well, some people (I won't mention names) had a real hard time keeping their eyes in the mirror! Seriously, if you've never tried it, you should. It's not as easy as it sounds, but it is great fun.