September 13th - Homework

Students are to complete the following assignment and bring it to class on September 20th.
Assignment: Degas Compositional Study
Find an image of an Edgar Degas painting. The image can be found online or from a book, but you must have (vie xerox, printer etc.)  a physical copy of the painting. It should be no smaller than 8.5" x 11". The copy may be black and white as long as the image is clear. After you have the image, create a tracing paper overly by taping the two top corners of the tracing paper to the image. You are then to look for all the compositional elements that Degas has used in the painting and trace them out on the overlay.
Composition is the arrangement of various elements in the given picture plane. Composition is used to control the viewers eye as it moves through the image. Some elements of composition frequently used are vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines (often forming larger geometric shapes such as triangles and zigzags), repeating shapes and colors, scale of shapes, balancing of positive and negative space, placement of significant features (heads, torsos, arms and legs) and pointers (the directionality of people or objects gaze that have a specific "face"). Below are examples of some of these elements found in one Degas painting.

Here Degas uses the transition of the color in the ground plane to create a strong right and upward pointing  triangle, with the standing figure creating the base. You can see how it is intensified by the direction of the gaze of the standing figure. The top horizontal line even seems to bee coming right out of her eyes.

Here again Degas creates a strong right facing triangle, this time angling downward to balance the first one, through his placement of the tops and bottoms of the figures clothing.

Here you can see him using the color of the the clothing, complimented by the reduction in scale to create movement.

Again he is is using the repeating color and shape of the hair to push us across the image.