Beth/Lyric Project Week 11 (Scale)

As a reminder to those of you that don’t normally keep up with my blog (if you do, skip to the next paragraph), I have started a project that I’m calling the Beth/Lyric Project. In the spirit of the movie “Julie/Julia,” (i.e. Julie working through Julia Child’s cookbook) I have decided to work through the exercises in Lyric Kinard’s “Art + Quilt, Design Principles and Creativity Exercises” book. My goal is to get at least one of the exercises done each week. I’ll be posting my progress on Sundays. I’d love for you to work along with me. If you decide to do that, please post and let me know how you’re doing—send pictures too! If you have trouble leaving a comment on my blog, email me at bschnellenberger@gmail.com.

The week’s exercise was all about “scale.” I was instructed to “go on a treasure hunt and find an interesting object no larger than my thumbnail.” Well, much to my surprise, I didn’t have many thumbnail-sized objects in my house. I also went outside and looked in my yard and landscaping. I ended up finding more interesting things in the house and drawing them in an 8” X 10” format. I was supposed to “observe the tiny details” of the object. I did find this exercise very interesting. I noticed things that I hadn’t noticed before—and I noticed that most of the objects I found didn’t have very interesting lines. I ended up using a zipper pull on my luggage.

The “Ask Yourself” portion of the exercise…

• Is there anything surprising about this tiny thing that you don’t normally notice? (I hadn’t paid any attention to it at all, so EVERYTHING about it was surprising.)
• How does exaggerating the scale of this subject change its importance? (Of course, when something is enlarged, the importance of the object is increased.)
• Does this subject mean more to you than it did before this exercise? (I realize that by enlarging something, the design of the element becomes much more exciting. This has opened my eyes to other ideas for design elements.)
• What would happen if you portrayed it in other colors? (I think it would be fun to try this in different colors. I actually used the colors of the zipper pull, although I did add a little black.)
• How do you want a viewer to react to your piece? (At this point, I am just excited with what I’M learning with each exercise.)

The topic for next week’s exercise is “Illusion of Depth through Overlap, Size, Placement, Color, and Value.” Whew…that sure sounds like there will be a lot at work all at once doesn’t it? Join me in the exercise. I’m sure you’ll learn something. We will be working from instructions on Page 71 from Lyric Kinard’s “Art + Quilt” book.