Composing with Dot, Line and Shape

Something that might have been helpful is to show what the original photograph was so we can provide better feedback although it is not necessary.

For your bodily form composition, I actually feel your first composition is mor successful, as you mentioned, having the softer lines in the second composition created a disconnect for me when looking at it and because they were curved, unsmoothed lines, it felt separated from the other components. I particularly liked how in the first composition, you used light tones around the face and dark tones in the clothing. It looked light the face was lit up and the clothes were in darkness. I'm curious if that was the case in the original photo.

For your man made composition, I really liked how you handled the branches in both compositions. However, I think there could be improvement in the way you handled the car. In the first composition, the lines aren't geometric and this quality in particular make it distinct from the rest of the branches rather than how you chose to compose the car with lines and dots. In the second composition, I also felt it was a bit literal to have the circles to represent the wheels because I wouldn't have been able to see that it was supposed to represent a car unless I had seen the wheels.

For your human emotion composition, I really liked how you handled the background of the piece, it seems like the person is radiating a good emotion and I thought it was well executed.

I agree; the first human movement piece is great! I also think you used Kandinsky's ideas of dots and lines very well. I definitely feel more drawn to the first piece than the second one using shapes though. Maybe you could have used shapes that are less dense, since they seem to throw the image off balance a bit?

Line:
Human emotion: Overall I think this is a good composition.
While I do agree that by including the rigid environment with the softer human body creates an interesting contrast, but personally it doesn't seem as stressed to me. This might be because although there is a contrast, the human isn't really affected by the harsh rigid environment - they aren't really being consumed by it. Personally I would have liked to see some alterations to the human form due to these man-made factors. Another interesting though might be that stress itself could be considered man-made as well - it's a manifestation of our fears and anxieties that stem from within ourselves, so maybe there could have been some representation of that somewhere.

I like that you had different focuses for your dot and line pieces vs your shape pieces. It brought a lot of variation to your project. I think that the dot and line pieces could have been a little less representational, and a bit more abstract. For things like the human motion and human emotion pieces, you could've used lines as a way to depict a sense of motion or a sense of apathy rather than producing the physical focuses themselves. I do like your contrast work in the shape pieces very much. They look very dynamic and draw focus to the correct things.

I really like your compositions for both the man-made object and human emotion, For the man-made object, the differences in the way you represented the background really worked with what the object was composed of. Using dots instead of lines for the second composition with shapes makes the contrast show better, while lines achieved the more neutral colder feeling you wanted in the first. In the human emotion, your attempt at using spiral lines to show the curves gives the composition a bit of an abstract feeling.

For the human motion picture however, I feel like your representations could be a bit clearer in both cases. For the one with shapes, the hand itself looks slightly deformed while for the one without shapes, the keys on the keyboard can't really be seen as keys.

I think my favorite one of the six compositions made was the ceiling fan made of dots, lines, and shapes. The composition came out well balanced, but different enough so that it looked asymmetrical on purpose. I also really like how different sizes and thicknesses of the black shadow part was used to symbolize the angle from which the picture was taken and how that affected what the blades looked like. However, for the composition of the ceiling fan with just dots and lines, I thought the piece felt a little out of balance for while the lines were nicely grouped together around the dots to provide a sense of structure, the whole composition felt like it was too far to the right of the frame. There wasn't enough on the left side of the frame to balance the composition as a whole and it made it feel somewhat off.

I also liked your composition of the hand holding the basketball with dots, lines, and shapes. I think the composition did what you intended for it to do and the two diagonal "shadow" lines definitely connect the hand more to the basketball. I also liked the idea you had with the ceiling and I think it definitely grounds the hand and the basketball by telling the eye not to move above those horizontal lines, but I think you placed the final horizontal line a little too close to the basketball. The rest of the image feels a bit trapped/squashed under the weight of those horizontal lines. But overall, I think all of you compositions are great!

For the umbrella: In both compositions, the elements correspond pretty exactly to the basic elements of the object in the photograph: the handle, the two parts of the umbrella with the tie in between, etc. Since the sharp shadow is a pretty significant part of the original photograph, I'm surprised it wasn't acknowledged in either composition.

For human movement: I find the dots hovering in front of the screen interesting. From your description, they seem to represent not something displayed in the source image but rather the concepts that we associate with the laptop and what it does. Since you're not merely mimicking the image with simpler visual elements, you must be assigning meaning to the simple shapes used in these compositions.

In your compositions for a human in motion, I preferred the one with lines and dots only as well. I think the varied directions of the lines provide movement to the composition and also make the composition more balanced. The weight and depth of the person are more apparent. The one with shapes, on the other hand, feels more static. I would like to see you try to create more perspective in the shape composition by overlapping shapes and placing shapes more strategically. I think you do that very well in the composition with shapes for human emotion; the tie is brought to the foreground by using the bold shapes and the sofa feels more solid. I agree with you that the shape composition for human emotion is more balanced, as the dots seem to be contained by the addition of shapes rather than flowing around freely.

I really like how you used dots to represent hitting the keyboard for the human motion image-- it really captures the sound of typing! Because of this, I think I agree that the dot and line composition captures the situation and motion in a more interesting way, though it is not as literal. I also like the human emotion composition using dot, line, and shape quite a bit. Even though it is very simple, I definitely do get a sense of happiness when I look at it, since I automatically think of someone that is happy. Adding the two shapes similar to a nose and mouth make a huge difference in how I interpret the image. Perhaps you could add lines or dots to the dot and line composition in a way that is similar to these shapes to create the same effect? Overall, I like your outcomes a great deal!

Your last four compositions were right on the spot, nice job! The only bit of critique I have is for your second composition (human in motion with shapes). I think some of the techniques you used from your first composition (ex. parallel lines to represent the legs) could have carried over into this composition.

The documentation here is great. Each composition is well described and clearly separated from each other - nice use of headers. The clarity could be improved by adding the original images inline or a link to the previous project - someone who is unfamiliar with the previous project will not know the images you used.

The simple, well conceived approach you have taken is excellent and works well; you've clearly thought about how to communicate effectively with as little visual information as possible. The connection to Kandinsky is also well made.

Nice work.

Your human motion piece is so different across the two versions and I like that you were exploring so many elements. The dots and lines version, however, I felt was a little lacking. The stick figures seem random and purposeless without the context of the focus of the image. The second version is much more interesting to me because although you had few elements, they were better framed, made better use of the space, and were less literal.

Wow, I absolutely love what you've done! I particularly impressed with how you portrayed the leaves in your manmade structure composition, that was really clever and was a great representation of the original piece. I think you really achieved your goal, nice job!

To help a viewer seeing this for the first time, it would be great to include the source materials or a link to the previous photography project where someone could see the reference images.

The human motion is clear for the lines, but the movement version is not as successful. The dots around the knees, arms don't emphasize motion as much as look like shadows. The blocked shapes in the upper torso look unplaced and awkward.

The emotion dots version is not clearly legible. It only becomes clear as shapes are added. This is a great opportunity to experiment with symbolic representation rather than literal recreation of the source image. Experimentation with more abstract interpretations could really have helped this piece.

The man made structure works the best out of all the pieces in both the dots and shaped versions.

I really like your style of composition here. Your are right in that most of the time, using shapes as well increases the clarity of the composition and makes it visually more similar to the original photo, but I feel that you managed to get the essence of those photos really well with just lines and dots. The reason why it was so clear was because you didn't just use the same style and color of lines and dots throughout the photo, but varied the style for each sub-component of the photo. This in effect made the overall image much more clear, as we are able to visually break down your re-compositions according to the variations in style.

In your human movement piece, I thought the dots and lines composition was excellent. Your use of Kandinsky's theories is spot on, and the darker, angular shape of the stationary figure really stands out and draws attention to itself. In the shapes version, however, this effect is somewhat lost by the addition of other full, dark pieces that draw the emphasis away and make the scene feel heavier and less focused. Maybe using some gray tones would help this, as opposed to using exclusively black.

Raisa, I really liked your simple, clean style. I think it worked well as a rough outline of your pieces. However, I think some of your compositions may have been too simple, and they may have omitted parts of the original photograph that were key to setting the tone of the photograph. For example, your manmade structure photo was my favorite because it was complex and intricate, and it had many different shapes and lines. I thought you could have incorporated this sense of complexity more into this composition.