Exercise - 1:
Exploration and Exercises - Grey and Hue Scale:
Duration:
1 day, Individual Exercise.
Objective:
Other than increasing the response threshold of the observer the exercise has a good measure of skill also thrown into it. Part of the objective was to link up the exercise to a real life situation where a furniture and interior designer has to juxtapose not just various colours, but materials as well.
Mode:
• Make 16 or more distinct shades of gray using paints and brushes, fabric, gateway paper, OHP sheets, cello phane tape, or any other medium.
• Mount each of them on a rectangle of size 5X7 cm.
• Cut each the 5X7 cm rectangle into a square of 5X5 cm and a rectangle of 5X2 cm.
• Put together the squares to form a composition.
• Arrange the rectangles in a gray scale
Materials:
Found objects, ivory sheet, glue, mount board.
Discussion in the Class:
Gray- Applications and implications in design, The Weber Fetchner Law, Colour & Composition.
Observations:
Students explored a variety of materials such as fabrics, foam board, threads, aluminium sheet, different kinds of paper, thermocol etc. Having arranged the materials in a scale of gray, the gaps were hand painted.
The challenge was to find the correct position of highly reflective surfaces, for instance an aluminium or O.H.P. sheet. To resolve this, for the purpose of the exercise the viewing angle of the composition was fixed as right in front of the person and then the position allocated.
In most of the compositions there was a transition from the darkest shades to lightest. This could happen diagonally across the composition or laterally from top to bottom or vice versa. The next common approach was to arrange the shades in some sort of symmetrical manner across one axis. Though at the comprehension level the students did very well the execution left a lot to desire.
