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5 Basic Removals

January 27, 2022 By Sandy Breckenridge 1 Comment

Examples of 5 Basic Removals in Graphic Design

“Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything you are willing to practice, you can do.” – Bob Ross

After Five Basic Relationships, the eighth tutorial of the Graphic Design Basic Element Series covers Five Basic Removals.

Bob Ross Publicity Photo
Bob Ross publicity photo

Ross’s quote comes from years of observation and is quite realistic. He experienced a long career as a recognized artist. He also taught oil painting on the TV series, The Joy of Painting, which aired from 1983 to 1994. It ran on the PBS channel and still streams on various cable services.

People tune into his streaming oil painting series to listen in while he paints; his infectious personality entertains because he is upbeat, instructive, humorous, and positive.

He describes elements in his renderings as happy little trees and flowers while sharing how to turn brush stroke mistakes into birds claiming how mistakes are opportunities.

Ross understood to develop creative talent, treat it like strengthening a muscle with exercise. He knew the more a person plays, practices, and devotes time to an art practice, the more adept they will become at implementing their desired result.

What is a Removal in Art & Design?

We saw an example of a removal in the last tutorial describing Basic Design Relationships when learning the characteristics of a negative/positive removal.

There are four additional removals that your eye will notice with ease in nature, design, and art.

They are: pop out, hinge out, slide out, slice off, extend out.

Pop Out

The first condition to understand is that a pop-out can pop in or out! The negative/positive removal pops out then the removed shape is recycled elsewhere in the design. But what would a pop-in look like?

Example of a pop out and extend out in graphic design
Example of a pop-out and extend-out in graphic design

Imagine two different colored cubes side-by-side. Out of each cube, remove the same size shape. Next, pop in the cut pieces into the adjacent block.

As long as a glimmer of light is seen between the two shapes the removal’s pop in relationship remains obvious. If the eye is not able to differentiate between the pieces, this relationship will appear as an overlap.

Architecture can illustrate a practical example. Imagine a piece of siding popped out of an exterior wall of a building. Perhaps, a stained glass window is installed in its place.

The window becomes a pop-in because it is easy to distinguish the different materials. The builder can recycle the sliding and pop it in elsewhere to complete the exterior.

Slide Out

Have you seen or owned a wooden pencil box with a flat sliding lid? When opening the box the lid slides out and away from the base of the box. This action creates a visual example of a slide-out. The top edges of the two sides of the box and the lid covering the remaining part of the box retain a referral relationship of edge-to-edge. The section of the box’s top that slides is now a slide-out.

Slide-outs offer an edge-to-edge relationship while also defining a new relationship encompassing the section of the surface that extends to cover an additional area of the design.

Slice Off

Example of Slice Off in Graphic Design
Example of slice-off and a hinge-out in graphic design.

Imagine a banana sliced in half. When one half slides partly to one side or the other without losing its connection the appearance is an example of a slice-off.

The banana could be sliced diagonally, horizontally, or even vertically and generate this relationship.

The slice-off could be edge-to-edge or edge-to-point as long as the identity of the banana is not lost. If one section of the banana moves too far away they will appear as two halves having the only similarity being both pieces are bananas.


Hinge Out

A perfect visual of a hinge-out is seeing a bird open their beak. In a two-dimensional perspective, the two sections illustrate a point-to-point relationship. The two angles between the top and bottom beak create the relationship when opening.

A hinge-out can have an edge-to-edge relationship, too. Imagine a perspective illustration of a lake with a featured tree reflecting in the water. It can appear like the tree is one continuous plane. But, the refection is now an edge-to-edge hinge-out.

Extend Out

Example of an extend-out in graphic design
Example of an extend-out in graphic design.

Finding a practical example of an extend-out is more challenging. Imagine two overlapping large, flat stones in a garden. A mason wants to use them as a frame around a bush.

He uses a stone die cutter to make a square hole through both stones by cutting out the overlapping sections. Once he cuts through both, he removes the two identical pieces to reveal the ground where he can now plant the bush.

While looking down, the two stones now would appear two-dimensionally as an extend-out. The connection of cut stones makes the relationship obvious.

The mason can repurpose the two removed pieces and place them elsewhere in the landscaping. Recycling is a design tool, too.

Art Play

Taking photos is a perfect tool to accumulate visual examples of every design element imaginable. Nature is an incredible canvas, and awareness can teach our eyes how to see beauty as a relationship between its creations.

Take some time before the next tutorial in the series. Find and photograph examples of the 5 Basic Removals and add them to your art play journal. Then enjoy sketching, painting, or drawing what you can imagine.

Supportive Art Resources

Design is StorytellingA stimulating book on art design to add to your art library is by Ellen Lupton titled: Design Is Storytelling

“Designers tap into people’s emotions to trigger feelings of delight, desire, surprise, and trust…” as stated by Lupton.

She provides a trove of design examples of storytelling. She describes how color entices the senses as it invokes a connection to taste and smell. She accounts how designers stimulate an emotional story through their creative choices and provides quite a tribute of examples.


To see an exciting example, click > The Coffee Taster’s Color Wheel

The content applies when an illustrator paints an image. Art and illustration are storytelling. An artist or designer shares the story through a two-dimensional visual that comes to life in a three-dimensional experience.

Downloadable Tutorial Guide

Free free to download the 5 Basic Removals tutorial image.

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Our next tutorial will describe the Five Depth Clues found in design and a downloadable tutorial image.


To follow along, click > Art & Design Tutorial Table of Contents

5 Basic Relationships

January 14, 2022 By Sandy Breckenridge 1 Comment

Five Basic Relationships Introduction Image

“Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking.” – Ellen Lupton, Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

After Basic Picture Arranging Principles, the seventh tutorial of the Graphic Design Basic Element Series covers Five Basic Relationships.

Ellen Lepton’s, quote is a perfect statement to describe the esthetics of an art piece that is marked using a thoughtful relationship between the objects within the intended presentation.

When the subjects are too crowded, or the symmetry and balance lack planning, the art piece message may get lost in the design. A rendering or painting where design elements interact to support the theme will convey a pleasing story. The viewer may never know why they appreciate the art while feeling the statement captured the artist’s intent.

Referral

Relationship of Referral in Graphic Design
Visual example of the relationship of Referral in graphic design.

When two edges of an objects in the illustration are aligned parallel to each other but not touching the descriptive term is Referral in design.

An obvious architectural example is city buildings with a very small clearance between the structures.

This is often the case when taking a snapshot of a row of buildings from a street view.


Point to Point/Point to Edge

Relationship of Point to Point, and Point to Edge in Graphic Design
Example of Point to Point, and Point to Edge relationship in Graphic Design.

Two other relationships occur when round or triangular shapes are rendered.

An example is a round ball that butts up to a box. When looking closely only a very small point on the edge of the ball actually touches the wall. This is called point to edge.

Point-to point occurs when you place any apex of an angled shape, such as a triangle next to either a linear edge or a circular object. Only the apex touches the edge.


Overlapping

Relationship of Overlapping in Graphic Design
Example of relationship of Overlapping of contrasting elements in Graphic Design.

Another relationship is overlap, so overlapping is the third relationship.

Imagine a fence along a sidewalk. A gardener plants a row of flowers and even though the floral border doesn’t touch the background fencing, in a rendering the viewer perceives the rendering of the flora and fauna as overlapping.

The gardener may have placed a fountain in the scene next to the fence. Again, the fountain will appear as an overlap. In essence, overlap is a visual relationship. Contrasting elements are visually noticed.


Negative/Positive Removal

Relationship of Negative/Positive Removal in Graphic Design
Relationship of Negative/Positive Removal and smaller colorful block is example of Referral of Edge Alignments.

In a previous tutorial describing Basic Surface Enrichments, the qualities that create a pattern were described.

Design patterns are created using any surface enrichment or combinations. Negative/positive qualities were first introduced along with an example in this tutorial.

In a Negative/positive Removal  an actual shape is popped out of another shape. Then the removal is placed elsewhere in the visual story. The pop out might could be placed next to the initial shape and depending on the removal’s shape it could also have a relationship of either Referral, Point to Point, or Point to Edge!


Referral of Edge Alignments

In this last of the five relationships, a continuous flow of edges combine together to make an inclusive statement. A great example is a block of varied size posters placed on a wall together. Another might be many paintings placed to appear as a unified grouping telling a story.

Art Play

An enjoyable and rewarding art exercise is noticing the relationship between objects while taking a walk; take time and photograph several of each of the 5 Basic Relationships. You can also learn more about art and design by noticing your emotional response to the images as you review your photos later.

Supportive Art Resources

Picture This, How Pictures Work is a wonderful resource to provide a helpful understanding of the most basic creative principles. Anyone can gain an understanding of how to build powerful pictures. Picture This is used by art and graphic departments in colleges around the country.

Learning how pictures work to create emotional engagement gives an artist more creative power in telling a story with their art images.

Downloadable Tutorial Guide

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Our next tutorial will describe the Five Basic Removals found in design and a downloadable tutorial image.


To follow along, click > Art & Design Tutorial Table of Contents

Basic Picture Arranging Principles

January 2, 2022 By Sandy Breckenridge 1 Comment

Two Mice Side by Side
Picture Arranging: Image illustrates two mice that are the same size centered and positioned side by side.

“Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty, and perfection.” — Hermann Weyl

After Basic Surfaces Enrichments, the sixth tutorial of the Graphic Design Basic Element Series covers Basic Picture Arranging Principles.

The above quote by E. M. Forster, a brilliant German American mathematician who gave lectures in the early 1900s on “Space, Time, Matter” revealed his deep appreciation for philosophy and how the topic relates to his findings on relativity.

Leave it to the complexity of a physicist to describe how a simple relationship of objects in art and their placement lends to its visual appeal while convincing the viewer of its relation to position, direction, and size.

Positioning objects
An example of object position to one another and their relationship to the entire space.

Position

As a graphic design arranging principle we describe the term position in art as both a verb and a noun.

To position as a verb infers the action of placing an object in relation to another object within the scope of the image.

As a noun, the viewer takes in the entire scope of the picture and determines its relationship within that space.


Direction

Previously we covered direction in relation to making a mark, such as the direction of a line.

When describing arranging principles it is the point along which something lies that describes this relationship.

Some examples are:

  • Center
  • Right
  • Left
  • Up
  • Down
  • Between

Direction can become more complex as we’ll learn in the next tutorial that covers Five Basic Relationships.

Size

Big Cheese Little Mouse
An example of how altering the size of objects will change the main subject for the viewer.

In design, size describes the quality of a thing which determines how much space it occupies.

The action of sizing an object can also make a statement.

Sizing helps in determining if an object becomes the focal point or a supporting element. The two illustration examples of the mouse and cheese make this point by altering the size proportions.

In one the mouse is the focal point. In the other illustration, cheese becomes the main subject.


Art Play: Rearranging Objects

An artist can place an element to build interest and move the eye into the artwork. This can entice the viewer to relate more deeply to a dominant object and allow other illustrated elements to be supportive of the theme.

Take some time in your art journal and play with an object that would normally be sized relative to other objects in its natural environment.

See how much fun you can have changing its position, size, and direction. You might place it in the foreground and make it small, or in the background and change its color. Notice how the eye relates to the object as you make these changes.

Downloadable Tutorial Guide

Please feel free to download the image guide for Basic Surface Enrichments.

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Our next tutorial will describe the Five Basic Relationships found in design and a downloadable tutorial image.


To follow along, click > Art & Design Tutorial Table of Contents

Graphic Design: 4 Basic Surfaces

October 27, 2021 By Sandy Breckenridge 1 Comment

Example of Four Basic Surfaces

“To improve oneself you must be as persistent as the drip, drip, drip of water filling a bucket. Do a little bit, every day.” ― Jeffrey Fry

After Basic Directions, the fourth tutorial of the Graphic Design Basic Element Series covers Four Basic Surfaces.

The quote by Jeffrey Fry reminds me of what it means to have a daily art practice. I don’t know of an artist who would say they have mastered art! Art is one field where there is always more to learn, do, express, and discover.

Exercising the Artist Within

Have you experimented with the mantra shared in the last graphic design post?

“line, plane, tone, small, medium, and large”

Creating an art journal is a perfect way to track progress. This way you’ll have an easy record of your daily art explorations. You can go back anytime and embellish or change up the variations you create and explore additional elements.

Try altering each of your illustrations, paintings, drawings, or images by using a different medium, too. Try incorporating new shapes, sizes, textures, tones, and directions.

Exercising the way we see an object or an interest while recreating that which we see in simplistic terms can lead to a pleasant storm of ideas.

I remember one of my art instructors telling me that all design in art is redesign. Another way to phrase the evolution of an idea is that it is a variation of a theme.

Identifying Four Basic Surfaces

It is time to experiment with the next category of elements in this series. These are the Four Basic Surfaces in graphic design.

  1. Reflective: A surface that gives back an image
  2. Opaque: A surface that is solid without light
  3. Transparent: A surface that transmits light rays so that objects on the other side are recognizable.
  4. Translucent: A surface that lets light pass through it but is not transparent.

Reflective Surfaces

Reflective Surface
Reflection of flowers in foil.

The most common reflective surface that we experience is easily found in our homes.

The mirror is the most obvious device that reflects. But this brings up the question of how reflection is modeled in art?

Creating a collage from torn papers can be a perfect way to incorporate existing reflective surfaces by including foils, reflective tape, or paper in your design.

You can also purchase mirror paint at most any home improvement store. In an art store, you can find acrylic paint that is formulated to reflect or simulate reflective qualities in an artwork.

There is also another way to capture the qualities of a reflection. For example, a landscape painting may illustrate a lake with a body of water reflecting the trees and mountains above.

Another illustration could be a painting of a car with a shiny finish parked alongside a row of bright flowers showing a floral reflection as a point of interest.

What examples can you dream up and add to your daily art journal that offers reflective qualities?

Opaque Surfaces

Opaque Surface
Example of an opaque surface where light is blocked by the dense curtain.

A solid color that does not allow light to pass through it is very easy to illustrate and takes the least amount of imagination.

If you held up a piece of opaque paper to cover a lightbulb the luminous rays are not able to penetrate or shine through the surface.

In an art image the same is true. Just like the illustration of the curtains that cover a window, the objects on the other side of an opaque color are not visible.

Transparent Surfaces

Transparency in art can be created by using a clear film like medium or paper to overlay over another layer of colored paper. The color will be clearly visible.

A transparent surface can easily be modeled in a collage using see through materials as one of your supplies.

Transparent Surface
Example of a transparent surface allowing the outdoor scene to be seen through the window panes.

How might transparency appear in a painting?

Imagine an illustration of a window with lightweight gauze curtains covering a few panes of glass.

The glass clearly allows the distant scenery to glimmer through and this surface leaves nothing to the imagination for the viewer.

Another example, could be a painting of a pristine body of water that allows images of the colored stones that lay at the bottom to shine through the water’s calm surface.

Transparent surfaces can be implied or created. You might try using various types of see-through materials that allow objects and shapes on the other side to be fully visible.

Translucent Surfaces

Translucent Surfaces
An example of a translucent surface showing lightweight gauze curtains allowing the background to show through.

Light also plays an important role in creating translucency. In this case, light passes through to create transparency, but the objects on the other side are not fully recognizable.

Artist materials could include tissue papers, or other lightweight see through materials such as a tinted film.

Using the previous example of a window with a lightweight curtain, we can see the material allows the glimmering colors and elusive shapes to shine through to the viewer.

Downloadable Tutorial Guide

Please feel free to download the image guide of the Four Basic Surfaces.

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Art Playtime

Make sure to take time before moving on to the next post and record examples of each of the Four Basic Surfaces in your art journal.

The next series post incorporates several Basic Surface Enrichments. They offer additional opportunities to change up your creative ideas and practice creating some fun art images.

To follow along, click > Art & Design Tutorial Table of Contents.

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