Learn How to Abstract a Design in Art or Craft
Memory Montage, Drawing Your Vacation, Abstraction Exercise
Jun 22, 2008 Mary Welling-Bonney
With the summer in full swing many people are enjoying outdoor recreation. Whether you are traveling far and luxurious or close to home and rustic, this exercise will give you a unique way to catalog all of your memories from your trip.
You can either do this while on your vacation or when you return home. The key is to remember all of the little details that made this trip special.
Materials Needed:
- One 6" X 6" piece of cardboard
- 80 sheets of 6" X 6" paper
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Exacto Blade
- One 8" X 10" piece of cardstock
Begin with the 80 sheets of paper. On each sheet of paper do a quick sketch of one thing that you remember about that moment that was special. You do not need to be an artist or get detailed. Think of it this way. Say you went to a cabin in the woods. The first thing you remember is the long drive that gave you a chance to have a really good talk. This gives you two good drawings and you haven't even arrived at your destination yet.
You can do a rough sketch of a tire or dashboard on one sheet and lips on another. Make the drawings approximately four inches in size. Once you arrived you needed to unload luggage and you got a chance to look around the cabin. Sketch out a suitcase on one sheet and some part of the cabin that impressed you immediately like the logs or the fireplace on another sheet. It will not matter if you draw badly. Continue in this vein for the entire trip until you have eighty rough sketches.
Next you will need the cardboard, ruler, pencil and exacto knife. Measure a 1" X 1" square toward the center of the cardboard. It doesn't have to be dead center but it does need to be one inch square. Cut out the square.
Using your cardstock, measure out a one inch grid pattern running vertically and horizontally. Pencil the grid in lightly.
Take your first drawing and lay the cardboard with the one inch square cut out on top of your drawing. Move the cardboard around until you see an interesting design. For our example we had a tire. You do not need to show a tire in your window. You may want to go toward the center or you may like it better to move more to the outside of the tire. It doesn't matter which you choose. Whatever you see in the window transfers to your first square on the cardstock. Now lay the cardboard over your second drawing. Move the cardboard around until you find an interesting angle and transfer whatever is in the window into square number two. Continue through all eighty pictures.
When you have transfered all of your designs the cardstock will will completely filled in. You can either frame your drawing or go back over it in colored pencil, paint, chalks or even recreate the design in fabric applique.
You can make a larger montage by using a larger cardstock or canvas and using a slightly larger window in your cardboard. Have fun with it. Let the kids come up with the drawings and you create the montage. They will be thrilled with how incredibly creative they are.
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