COMPOSITION COMPOSITIONS

"Once the students become aware of symmetrical and asymmetrical composition, they see it everywhere they go in life."

   - Meryl Meisler

 

 

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:

 

Examples of asymmetrical composition:

Examples of symmetry:

Example of visual art composition accompanied by a written composition:

 

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 Microsoft Word.

• 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.)

 

  Developed by Meryl Meisler for TeachNet, 2004