It has been a while since I have created a piece of art in photoshop. In my new graduate visual design course, I was given the task to mimic an abstract painters’ work and complete it in Adobe Photoshop. The abstract art piece I chose to mimic was Robert Delaunay’s Rhythm, Joy of Life (1930).
Robert Delaunay was an artist who made his way to creating abstract work later in his life. Many of his art pieces show Cubism and focuses on bright colors and abstraction. I decided to mimic this piece which is shown in the picture below because it stood out from the rest of the images when looking for abstract work on Google.
While examining the piece made by Delaunay I recognized many of the elements I have learned from this module’s readings. In chapter 2 of Graphic Design Solutions by Robin Landa she talks about typographic shapes, specifically patterns. Landa explains patterns as “a systematic repetition of a unit or element with obvious directional movement within a given area” (Landa 23). Throughout Roberts Rhythm, Joy of Life piece, you can see a clear pattern of circular lines and boxes in his piece.
Trying to mimic Delaunay’s piece, I used Adobe Photoshop to create something similar. The piece I have created is down below. I am not much skilled in Photoshop but I have tried to recreate something similar to Rhythm, Joy of Life. Compared to the original artist’s piece, there are differences. In my Photoshop recreation, you can see the circles are forming patterns like Roberts piece presents. I also have some rectangle like shapes that Delaunay incorporated into his art piece.
As I am explaining the shapes there is an interesting article I have read from a site labeled as Programming Design Systems. The author of this article mentions that “seeing and analyzing the things we see comes naturally” and that learning design “is just an extension of something we do every day: seeing and thinking”. It may be hard to understand what my piece and or Delaunay’s piece is saying due to the many circles and shapes going on. Many people may analyze a piece of art differently than the next person.
Landa writes about unity in the Graphic Design Solutions book and it relates to both my piece and the original piece I mimicked. The circles in my Photoshop design creates unity by allowing the repetition of circles on the canvas.
In the image I created, you can get a sense of the background, foreground, and middle ground. I learned a lot of information from a great source of information about composition from an instructor of Art’s presentation at Bowling Green State University, Anthony Fontana. The background in the image is blue, while the middle ground is some of the small circles. The foreground in my picture is the bigger circles. It is much the same with Delaunay’s Rhythm, Joy of Life work. The bigger circles are somewhat dominating the image as well.
Though I couldn’t get close to what Robert Delaunay created years ago the art piece I have created uses the same elements that Robert used to create his piece. Hopefully, you like the bright colors I have also incorporated into my art piece as well.
NATURALLY BRI 