Assignment 2: The 4 Principles

Polly Appfelbaum was the artist I used as inspiration for my paintings. I really liked her style of art because of the colorfulness in each piece. She used a lot of repetition but it still caught my eye because of how she represented her work. My beginning sketches seemed to really imitate Appfelbaum's art, however towards the end, I began to incorporate my own style.

The theme I chose to portray was the growth periods in nature, specifically in cherry blossoms. I figured that choosing nature would be quite boring, so I wanted to sketch cherry blossoms in abstract form.

Movement: This is my favorite composition out of the four. I used branches and abstract versions of how I would interpret a cherry blossom in the mid-stages of the growth period. The branches were to show movement as well as the swirls to create more dynamic flow. Though I used a similar design in my composition, I varied it up by filling one in black and the other white. One improvement I could have made for this project was to create more depth and improve my layering technique. I could have shown a change in size of the two flowers I designed so that it shows a 3-d effect.

Repetition: I wanted to use circles to show repetition in this composition. The stem represents the stamen of the cherry blossoms. However to make it interesting, I changed the depth and size of the design. The background is a blow-up version of the design on the foreground. The issue I was concerned about was how I portrayed the depth in this piece. Looking at it through the picture and against the big wall in class, I realized that it all seemed to be on one plane. I could have improved this composition by using different boldness of the lines.

Balance: I really tried to make this piece abstract and used lines to balance out the composition in the piece. I stayed consistent by using two of the same design but having them overlap each other. I also tried to create

some type of depth by using lines on the sides of the work. One major critic I think I should address is the variety of shapes and lines I used for this composition. All the lines used are curvy, showing movement in a abstract way. I could have used other types of shapes to create a more intricate varied piece.

Emphasis & Economy: This composition was probably the most challenging to me. I knew my design had to be simple but interesting. I wanted to show an abstract version of how I saw cherry blossom as and thought it was a good idea to use a continuous line to draw the flowers. I tried to make the piece more interesting by showing flow and movement throughout the work. After the critique on Tuesday, I probably could have incorporated a more detailed design within the flowers to make my composition more appealing.