End of an Era…

So the year has ended and I've promised a year of new beginnings. And so it shall be. The month of January will slowly tick down and I'll be doling out new assignments and new exercises to those among you who wish to flex your artistic muscles.

But for now the art exercises are simply ideas for you to read until the end of the month rolls around. The end of my vacation is rapidly approaching and on Monday the beginning of the next work year starts. The last day of this year marked the last day of work for my father as he has finally retired. But fear not for he has found plenty of stuff to do. One hobby he has found to occupy his time is woodworking.

And for an exercise I have decided to think about a small wood ornament for him to work on. The wood ornaments that he is working on are thin pieces of wood with positive and negative spaces. The wood is about an eighth of an inch thick and the thick and thin of the cut pieces have to be thought about when designing the piece to be cut. The lines of a typical drawing or sketch are too thin. Lines almost have to be thrown out and you must begin to think in shapes.

Lines in woodworking come down to simply scorching wood in order to create accents or it amount to the line created by the union of two separate pieces of wood. In the case of the flower ornament that I designed, I thought in shapes and threw out lines except to separate ideas in the completed sketch. I decided to achieve balance in this particular piece through the use of a kind of symmetry. Not so much like folding a square down the center or corner to corner but using two ideas that are symmetrical, such as the two flowers crossing at a central location.

This kind of design is not only good for crafts because of its simplicity of structure but also for icon and logo design. In both cases a simple black and white design that is easily remembered and identifiable with the corporation or identity of the individual is important. With the practice of using positive and negative space rather than lines and layers of complexity, the design of icons and logos comes easier to mind.

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