"Once the students become aware of symmetrical and asymmetrical composition, they see it everywhere they go in life." - Meryl Meisler
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OBJECTIVES
Students will be able to explore composition, balance, symmetry, and
asymmetry and apply learning to their own original digital media piece;
create a 30-frame animation in Flash and upload to the Web; and express in
written form an interpretation of their art work.
MOTIVATION
Elicit
from the students what they think is the relevance and definition of the following
in relationship to visual art: composition,
balance, symmetry, asymmetry. Use digital or print images as examples.
VOCABULARY
Find
definitions of composition, balance, symmetry, asymmetry:
ArtSpeak
101 http://kn.pacbell.com/wired/art2/choose/index.html
Composition, in art;
The
Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001. http://bartleby.com/65/co/composit-art.html
DEVELOPMENT
Explore the following online resources:
Create
a wild life composition with Carl Rungius. Great introduction from the
National Museum of Wildlife Art with art principles animated, http://wildlifeart.org/Rungius/intro_movie.htm
Examine composition
in the painting “George Washington Crossing the Delaware” with
the Metropolitan Museum of Art online at http://metmuseum.org/explore/gw/el_gw.htm
Read artist Nancy
Doyle's theory of general guidelines for “good composition”
Examples
of asymmetrical composition:
Kandinsky:
Compositions, published by the Museum of Modern Art
http://glyphs.com/art/kandinsky/
Piet
Mondrian from the WebMuseum, Paris
Examples
of symmetry:
Meryl
Meisler, MTA Submerged Poster http://mta.nyc.ny.us/mta/aft/posters/tp_submerge.htm
Symmetry in Renaissance Architecture http://learner.org/exhibits/renaissance/symmetry.html
Example
of visual art composition accompanied by a written composition:
Charles
Demuth's painting The
Figure 5 in Gold inspired by William
Carlos Williams' poem “The Great
Figure”
http://wisdomportal.com/Christmas/Figure5InGold.html
APPLICATION
•
The students’ task is to sketch a composition of at least 5 elements--
movement, pattern, balance, proportion, contrast, line, color, etc.
•
The drawing and painting tools of Macromedia Flash are used to recreate the
sketch. Each element of the composition must be drawn on a separate layer.
•
An animation of at least 30 frames in length is planned and produced using the 5
elements. The composition of the image changes in the course of the animation.
The completed animations are saved as .swf files.
•
The students write compositions about their animated compositions, using a
word-processing program such as
•
The animated compositions and text are incorporated into Web pages using an
authoring program such as Dreamweaver or writing html code, depending on the
students' prior experience and also the time allotted to teach basic web page
design.
STUDENT WORK
To view my students' projects, click here:
http://thebleedingedge.org/features/compose_9/compose_toc.html
(The projects that best met all curricular objectives are Noah's and Aiyana's. These would be good examples to show other students prior to teaching this unit.)