A project that began as just some lines to me has turned into a whole new perspective on how something that seems so simple can be so complex.
We began our project with 5 materials. Black paper, white paper, glue, scissors and a ruler. We were directed to cut out 10 5×5 squares with the black paper and apply as many types of vertical or horizontal lines as we wanted. I grabbed my sketchbook and soon began to think of ideas. I came up with a few ideas that just led to another and another until I had the 10 squares completely thought out. I never thought I’d be looking into lines and patterns as deeply as I had. In some I tried to portray themes of movement, of descending, of minimalism, all in black and white lines. I really enjoyed playing around with the endless possibilities the prompt had.
Next, we had to pick out three of our favorites to make on Illustrator. I picked my favorite ones based on the themes they followed. I decided upon ones that show strong imagery of expanding, descending and condensing patterns within them.
To narrow it down to my favorite two to put onto tracing paper then to be made into another piece on Illustrator, I simply picked one that flows from up and down to one that seems to be going outwards from side to side. This gave me a good variety to work with while creating a layout. I also played around with the idea of inverting the colors of the lines to see if that changed the dynamic of the piece.
Lastly, we had to create our own set of rules for the final project, that had to be based off of the lines we had created. I played around with the ideas of what if I added circles? What if I kept some elements the same? And what if I made a pattern? So, I did that. I began with a circular bullseye, inverted right down the middle. From there, I flipped the bottom row of lines and kept the background just as that. Then, I pasted the bullseye onto the background of lines, and decided that the design I had wasn’t enough. I added a few more circles and played around with how I can make them seem to mesh into the lines that I had already placed there. I soon came up with the basis design for my final project. I wanted the piece to be more intricate, so I started to copy and paste it into smaller forms, thus creating the pattern that I ended up with.
Overall, I’m confident with how my project turned out. I believe the viewer can truly see the resemblance from step 1 all the way to the final project. It was nice to see how it progressed and as it did, my thought of some “simple” lines did too.
