View Single Post
  #22  
Old 03-24-2008, 09:00 PM
pilkguns's Avatar
pilkguns pilkguns is offline
Platinum
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 522
Default Re: Scrollwork design and analysis, step by step tutorial

Okay, a number of good things of been mentioned, but for now I want to keep this simple as possible for those who are beginners in scroll design. I for sure don’t want to get into the Golden Ratio right now. While it is certainly an underlying yardstick, I don’t think trigonometry is the reason people want to read this thread. Many fine engravers and artists have composed scroll designs for centuries in wood, stonework, tapestry, paintings and of course metal with little or no mathematical skills. I just cringe at the thought of someone trying to design scroll with a set of proportional dividers in one hand and a pencil in the other. In this thread, I want to give someone new to this art the skills to recognize shapes, patterns and flows within a scroll pattern with their own eyes and ultimately subconsciously or consciously design patterns with these principles of excellance. The old "eyeball thing" to some.

So with that in mind, I want us to keep our focus on the first panel, shown here again.
We will go back to the overall design on the 1873 later, but now lets stay on this small area and study the basics. When your read you begin with A, B, C, when you sing you begin with Do-Re-Mi (those who have had class with me know this the point I break forth into song) When you do scroll you begin with draw, balance and fill.


To review up to this point, we have noticed the big center leaf and the big mainbody scroll that fills up the intial space creating 4 separate outer spaces. There is also of course the inner perimeter of space inside the backbone that is roughly equidistant to the large center leaf.


I think the next thing in importance to be noticed in size and interest is the clusters of grapes. If you look at these, what shape do you see that they create? Do you see the Equilateral Triangle? What about the Isoceles triangle? Either of these present the grape leaves in balanced proportion to the rest of the pattern, irregardless of what else is in the pattern.



Welllllll, I hear someone saying those two clusters at the right side of the pattern are two close to each other, considering the equidistance to the others involved. Yes that is true, but if you consider that they are also at the front of the gun, in essence they are foreshadowing or pointing down the barrel, creating an “implied line” that Ray was talking about in another thread.

Okay, time for me to go to bed and you to work on your homework. What is the other set of design elements creating a geometric shape that is present in this panel alone?
Reply With Quote