I was thinking about visual grammar this morning and what experimentation I could do… I read Tony’s blog posts and watched his videos to remind me of the workshops, which really brought it more to life and then I watched The Dot and the Line video that Tony mentioned in class… I highly recommend it… Two lightbulbs went off while I was watching. Firstly, that “it all starts with the dot”, a dot becomes a line, a line can become a shape or a curve, a curve becomes a shape etc… I’m going to do some experimentation on this, to investigate where the transition comes… The second lightbulb was a memory of hours I used to spend doodling in maths classes making curve drawings from lines using graph paper. If you don’t know what I mean, here’s a rather rudimentary one I did earlier (spot the Blue Peter reference)…
I remember there being artists on the Bayswater Road who made these from fishing wire stretched between pins pushed into canvas. I may even have done some myself as a child… What I suddenly remembered is that you make curves from straight lines… I experimented a little more to if there was any effect of line thickness (and I’ll do more, and on colour too) that might reveal if there’s a point when a series of lines is still just lines and when it becomes a curve… It certainly appears that the thicker the line, the less line you see…
And then I got completely carried away and have spent the last few hours making this animation in Photoshop (Tribute to the Dot and the Line)… It’s the first animation I’ve ever made so be kind!
Picas and the Peloton 