Project Two

My theme for this project was a juxtaposition of cities and fantastic animals. In all my sketches, giant snakes and dragons seemed to be the prevailing mythical creature. As an architecture major, I am constantly exposed to so many images of cities at all scales that I lose interest, even though I find all the complexities of a city fascinating. With the addition of an element of fantasy, I wanted to bring the life back to the city, with a twist of imagination. Furthermore, I was inspired by the work of Aubrey Beardsley, who used fantastic elements and a play of solid/line to create visually stimulating and thought-provoking images.

Repetition

For this category, my image consisted of a stacked houses on an island reminiscent of Santorini, Greece. In the composition, the houses, portrayed as repeating linear squares, semicircles, and rectangles, were broken up by the solid black shapes of oversize snakes making a serpentine through the city. The only other solid shape in the image was the silhouette of a hill in the top left of the background. Although I originally made the hill solid black to balance out the business of the linear houses on the right, it ended up being too distracting and drove attention to the background of the composition instead of the foreground. Nevertheless, I liked how the image turned out because it kept the eye interested and moving around the composition.

Balance

My image in the balance category was that of a dragon sleeping atop a series of mountains. The dragon's snake-like body contrasted with the color of the mountain it happened to be on. The very back and front mountains were white, and thus the dragon's body was black, while the middle two were black and the body white. The compositional movement directed the eye in a diagonal from the top left to the bottom right. The balance in the image was created by the equal division of black/white and object/background. To further create depth as well as balance, I added tree details in varying scales to the mountains, with the smallest in the furthest mountain and increasing size and detail in proximity to the foreground. Balance in the image is further enhanced by the use of curvilinear shapes for both the object and background, creating a calm, undulating rhythm.

Movement

The movement category was the most difficult for me with the theme because I was inclined to use perspectival images that did not offer dynamic compositions. I chose my final image because the perspective in it is part of what generates the movement, especially when combined with the flying creature in the foreground. The repetitive details of the cityscape in the background are offset by the dynamic, linear features of the moving object in the front. The use of line and solid shape also combine to create a sense of depth and distorted perspective, suggesting an underlying story or context for the creature who is rounding the corner so quickly that you can almost hear the "swoosh" of its wings.

Emphasis and Economy

Last but not least, my image for the emphasis and economy category was, unsurprisingly, minimal. A pattered ground plane takes up the bottom fifth of the image, and from it, offset to the right, rises a lone TV tower with a spire at the top. A circle made of a line, beginning at the middle left edge, swoops down to the ground, rises back up at the middle right, and curves around the middle top to end in a droplet resembling a snake's head at the top left. The very extremes of the circle are cut off, creating an implied line that the viewer connects visually. The placement of the circle, used as a framing device for the tower, creates visual movement that ultimately always leads back to the main element - the tower. The background is white and all elements are black lines. This further underlines the piece's focus on emphasis and economy. The proximity of the two elements most similar to one another (the tower and the snake's head) creates a relationship of tension in the middle of the composition, leading the viewer to look away and yet be drawn back to it by the framing circle.