To acquaint you with the importance of the frame shape as it influences compositional considerations, and to explore the possibilities of image shape, location, and size within a variety of frame shapes.
Materials:
Drawing materials: pencil, scissors, mat knife or Exacto knife, colored construction paper, and rubber cement.
Method:
The outer picture frame or frame shape is important to the success or failure of a composition. As such, it is often among the first considerations of an artist in a composition. To explore this, select several sheets of colored construction paper for backgrounds that will be defined by their outer frame shape. Create six different frame shapes that might include standard geometric shapes like triangles, rectangles, circles, squares, diamonds, ellipses, or irregular shapes of your own creation. Try to make the largest frame shapes possible from each sheet of paper.
Next create several shapes to be placed within the frame shape as your “image”. They should be made out of paper of contrasting color or darkness. They will be non-objective. They can be mechanical shapes (circles, squares), shapes suggested by things in your environment, free forms torn out of newspaper, cut shapes, shapes found in the scrap heap, and so forth. Try making the same shape in three sizes–small, medium, and large enough to run off the edges of your frame shape. In composing or developing an idea, artists often have to make a mark, react to it and the space around it, and make the second mark, and repeat the process. You will have to do a similar thing here by putting the small shape on the background and sliding it around–nudging it here and there until something tells you that it “feels” good or is right at home. The exact center of the frame is the first place that you discover as a good, final location. However, you are supposed to find all the other compositional possibilities, so do NOT use the frame shape’s center–anywhere else BUT there.
Try each image shape on all the picture frame shapes. You are trying to solve some of the following questions as you work:
• Does this shape feel better in a vertical frame, in a horizontal frame, in a square frame or in a circle?
• Does every new picture frame require a new final location?
Find the final “home” spot for each shape.
Next, make a small thumbnail sketch or drawing for each discovered solution so that you may come back to the locations later and glue them down. In the meantime, try a larger or smaller version of the same shape on the same picture frame shape. Can you find a different location for the new size image? If an image shape extends outside the picture frame, it will be trimmed back for final presentation. Identify the top or bottom of your compositions.
Select the best solutions for each picture frame shape, consider:
• Which shapes seem to feel better in vertical frame shapes?
• Which shapes seem to feel better in horizontal shapes?
• Does a change in size make any different in the direction of the frame shape?
You may wish to present several solutions for some of the picture frames. Rubber cement your best results in place.
For examples of squares placed on an ellipse, see Figs. 1.4A, 1.4B, and 1.4C.
