The elements of design

I don’t know how widely known this book is but I find it endlessly fascinating and I quite frequently pull it out for a quick browse even though I have seen all the images many times. I have had my copy for several years but it is still in print and I urge any artist who doesn’t already own a copy to try to obtain one.

Back cover

For a description of the book I cannot do better than quote from inside the front flap,

The bark of a plane tree in Paris; a detail of a cotton towel in Japan; sunset in the Egyptian desert; soil in the Yosemite National Park, California; a tiled floor in Bangkok; a wall in Ferrara; an iron cart wheel in Antwerp…colours, textures, forms and shapes are the basis of this unique sourcebook that reveals the elements common to all design and literally teaches us ‘how to see’.  Hauntingly beautiful and deeply instructive, it surveys our whole environment, natural and manmade, and shows how it can be defined in terms of basic elements: variable arrangements of dots; lines that are straight, curving, bending or crossing; planes such as rectangles, squares, lozenges, triangles and circles.

All these are represented, with telling juxtapositions, in a wide range of materials and techniques, in one sense timeless and universal, in another datable and culturally conditioned. Ever-recurring design elements, they take us to the heart of the creative process: a transformation that may involve inspiration or imitation, representation or interpretation.

Destined to become a cult book for artists, designers and craftspeople of all kinds, as well as being an important educational tool, this amazing volume is a startling reminder of how the search for something new is a voyage of rediscovery into past and present form.

The book contains 177 colour illustrations and here are a few images as they are shown on opposing pages.

   Brick wall,Troyes, France.                  Detail of woollen kilim, Central Turkey.

          Woman's hat, Zulu people,      Cotton bag, applique, China.
          S,Africa

  Drain covers, Antwertp, Belgium         Detail of blouse,Tokyo, Japan.

                                                         

Nightfall

Nightfall 24" x 28" mixed media on  canvas

I have just finished this painting, which is a sort of progression from my earlier effort ‘Fired Earth’ that I posted a few weeks ago.  I know that some may regard this as rather gloomy but I am quite pleased with it.

On Sunday I went to the ‘Watercolour in Britain’ exhibition at the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, which was very interesting, the gallery was very busy, more people than I have ever seen there before.  The exhibition covered a rich variety of subject matter by many of Britain’s finest painters from the eighteenth century through to the present day.

Norwich Market c 1950 Watercolour

Earlier works were by JMW Turner, John Sell Cotman, Thomas Girton and many others while later paintings were by such artists as Edward Burra, John Piper, Graham Sutherland and Anish Kapoor.

I have never attempted watercolour painting nor been particularly interested in it but I was intrigued by this exhibition and the wide variety of styles on show. 

Mahonia Aquifolium

I recently came across these photographs that I took about 2 years ago, I am still quite pleased with them so I thought I would share them with you.

I was doing a little gentle gardening when I came across the remains of a Mahonia bush that I had dug out because it had grown very misshapen.  The roots caught my attention due to their lovely sinuous shapes and the texture of the bark.

After some cleaning up and trimming I took them into my ‘studio’ and set about trying to make something artistic of them.  I decided to use a very short depth of focus to produce a more dramatic effect and after several attempts I came up with these.

What a great boon digital photography is when you can see your results almost instantly on a large screen and make any desired corrections right away.