What are the assignments of graphic composition?

1.1 Graphic Composition Concept and Content Modification

"Composition" has the meaning of "grouping" and "synthesizing", which is to recombine the same or different morphological units into a new visual image. Recombination of the same or different morphological units into a new visual image. "Composition" is the graphic language platform of the design community ****, is a kind of common terminology in the art and design profession.

The so-called planar composition explores the visual syntax of two-dimensional space, mainly to study how to create and beautify the image in the two-dimensional plane, and its ultimate goal is to develop and cultivate creative thinking. Specifically, it is the use of points, lines, surfaces (including shape), in the two-dimensional plane in accordance with certain formal laws and formal laws of composition, break up and then synthesize, from which to obtain meaningful, creative beauty of the plane graphics. Plane composition is a systematic training of various composition skills and formal techniques, in order to cultivate the designer's sense of innovation for the purpose of improving the comprehensive ability to lay the foundation for design.

In order to adapt to the above requirements, the teaching content of graphic composition should be revised. Contemporary graphic composition courses should not only be limited to the modern school of composition based on formal analysis and mathematical logic, "abstract composition" training; should also be supplemented by the traditional natural form of sketching changes in the pattern based on "imagery composition", so as to become a jumping-off point for the transition from traditional sketching to modern composition. Sketching transition to the modern composition of the springboard; and then set up "theme composition", "graphic creativity" Note 1, etc. can be creative and comprehensive use of the composition knowledge of the teaching topics, so as to combine a new set of graphic composition of the new system of teaching. Design Online. China

1.2 Graphic Composition Education

In the late 19th century, the French post-impressionist master Paul Cezanne (1839~1906) put forward the distinctive thesis that all forms are composed of basic forms such as spheres, cylinders and cones, etc. In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, Alexandre Arrieta (1883-1965), the founder of the French Post-Impressionism, proposed a new system for teaching graphic composition, which is a new system for teaching graphic composition, and the new system for teaching graphic composition. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Alexei Gan (1889-1942) developed Sézanne's views and published the doctrine of Compositionism, which expressed the ideological characteristics of Compositionism in terms of the three principles of composition, texture, and structure, and laid the theoretical foundation for the formation of the later compositional system. [2] Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), a representative of the Russian Expressionists, and Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), a representative of the Dutch Stylists, practiced and developed Compositionism. The prototype of today's "Planar Composition" course was based on Kandinsky's purely rational analysis and training of points, lines and surfaces in the "Basic Course" of the Bauhaus School in Germany. Kandinsky's formal views on the composition of points, lines and surfaces were later scattered in his treatises "On the Problem of Form" (1912) and "Points, Lines to Surfaces" (1923). Although Mondrian did not form a complete theoretical work, his series of "Blossoming Apple Tree" and "Red, Yellow and Blue Composition" are still the model for us to learn the composition of lines and surfaces, i.e., to form a picture with the basic elements of "pure abstraction".

The Bauhaus School was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius (1883-1969). Represented in addition to Kandinsky mentioned above were Johannes Itten (1888-1967) and Josef Albers (1888-1976). A similar course in graphic composition was included in the basic curriculum pioneered by Itten, who in his book Design and Form spoke of the course's role in three ways, "1) to liberate the student's creativity and even his artistic talent; 2) to present the principles of creative composition to the student who would be an artist in the future, to be observed and experienced; and 3) to enable the student to choose with greater certainty his own work careers." [3] Unfortunately the Bauhaus was outlawed by German fascism in 1933, after which Gropius and a group of educators were forced to move to the United States to engage in design education and practice, and cultivated a number of design talents, laying the foundation for the vigorous development of the design industry in the United States.

After World War II, Japan was influenced by American university education, and sent people to the United States to study design, making Japan the earliest country in Asia to receive design education. 1947 "Composition Study" appeared for the first time in Japan's draft study guide outline, and in 1958 "Composition Study" has been "composition" with the Composition with Painting, Crafts, Sculpture and Design in 1958. [4] Hong Kong is only in 1967 to open the design course, after a few years of design education will flourish, so that the rapid development of industry and commerce. [5] And China is with the wave of reform and opening up in the 80s, only from Japan, Hong Kong, the introduction of composition teaching into the field of design education in China.

In the course of the development of graphic composition, Escher and Op Art representatives Vasarely and Reilly are worth mentioning, and his (her) works have enriched and perfected the teaching content of contemporary graphic composition. Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was a renowned Dutch printmaker, who is also honored as a master of illusionistic graphics. Many of his prints stem from his exploration of paradoxical space, figure-ground inversion, and fitting gradation, and there is no contemporary textbook on planar composition that does not mention some of his famous works. The French-Hungarian Vasarely (Victor Vasarely, 1906-1997), the father of Op Art, in his early works of "Zebra" series, obviously inclined to the awareness of line composition, the use of lines in pursuit of optical illusion effect, and only later adopted the point composition technique, combined with the principle of color residual image to create a large number of light effect works with a strong sense of light; the British master of the women's Riley (Bridget Riley, 1931), who is the most famous artist in the world, is the most famous artist in the world, and he is the most famous artist in the world. Bridget Riley (1931-) also explored visual perception phenomena such as edge illusion from line composition, and she also created a large number of emission composition works. It can be said that Vasarely and Riley respectively will Kandinsky's first point, line composition development to the extreme. Design Online. China

2 Traditional plane composition teaching disadvantages

Originally, the composition course is to cultivate and improve the students' graphic creativity, but the Chinese classroom has been imitated by the inertia of the sway, and has become the eight courses of the rules and regulations. I thought that the current plane composition teaching summarized the following three drawbacks:

2.1 Ignore the basic composition theory in-depth study

Part of the teaching content of the institution is too outdated, manifested in the light of the innovation of heavy copying, light theory of heavy production. Some colleges and universities syllabus ignore the theory of teaching this important link, and even this part of the content of only 1/8 of the class time to understand the traditional planar composition of the three major components of the "elements of the composition", "wrong expression" and "form of law "and other related knowledge, ignoring the development of plane composition and the theoretical exploration of the laws of form, not from the formation of the principle of composition of the original intention to explore its original cause to start, so that the students stay in the experience of the level of imitation of predecessors who have the relevant examples, can not really realize the mobilization of the students' artistic potential and innovative awareness of the purpose. Such as part of the so-called textbooks on the market, in the distribution of chapters into the theory of thirty, seventy percent of the example, the lack of Naosi Asakura's "art - design of the graphic composition" such as the boutique textbooks, can not give full play to the theory of the guiding role. Of course, teaching theory should have a method, focusing on enlightenment, against the rigid. For example, the law of gradual change can be combined with Escher's creative process, through the evolutionary sequence from the fit form "Eight Heads" (1922) to the gradual deformation of "Sky and Water" (1938), and then to the fractal art of the "Square Limit" (1964), to clarify that the source of the law of gradual change should be the first of all, the study of the fit form, the creation of the key to the relevant elements of the fit of the shape of the reasonable conversion, which would make the gradual change of the law of form to the form of the law. The law of form has been raised to the theoretical height of the law of form, which can deepen the students' understanding of the law of gradual change, and at the same time have a further understanding of the relationship between fit, gradual change and fractal.

2.2 means of expression of the old over-emphasis on hand-drawn

With the continuous development and progress of society, which requires us to teach the same need to keep up with the pace of the times and constantly update the concept of acceptance of the new faster and more convenient means of science and technology to serve the teaching practice. However, some institutions still advocate the use of hand-drawing to complete the plane composition work, and even some teachers consciously devalue the role of computer tools. Traditional hand-drawn assignments, so that students do not have to spend a lot of time and energy for speculation, conceptualization of the content of the work, is not conducive to the cultivation of innovative thinking, and even inhibit the play of creativity. The author 20 years ago in Hunan University College of Design and Art (then called "Industrial Design Department") to learn the plane composition is to use hand-drawn composition work, first of all, the pencil on the paper draft, and then use the duckbill pen hook edge, and then fill in the black gouache paint brush, if a little error, and then you have to use the white powder to take tracing pen combined with the bounding ruler modification! If there is any mistake, you have to use white chalk to correct it with a tracing pen and a ruler. If we use Photoshop, CorelDraw and other computer software to replace the hand-drawing technology training, not only fast, good quality, and can be repeatedly modified, so that the time and energy to focus on the conception and creativity. In addition, if we are in the basic composition teaching, we ask students to use the computer for design, will be very conducive to art and design students computer software application level, for the future professional design courses to develop good computer skills to lay the foundation (the author of the composition of the plane class is half of the composition of the theoretical class, half of the computer practice class). However, although the expression of graphic composition has become the mainstream of computerization, there is no need to use the computer in all aspects, can be combined with pencil, pen sketches in the conception stage, and then use the computer to improve the processing and the final picture. Therefore, if the hand-drawn and computer complement each other, will achieve twice the result with half the effort. For example, in the "Cat and Mouse" and other gradient composition work can be sketched in pencil first, and then push the graphic relationship between the two fit, and then re-create the computer works on the machine, you can save some of the unnecessary operation links.

2.3 Preference for dogmatic imitation of the laws of form

It is true that, both in the distant past and today, the vast majority of people are good at imitating, but poor at creating. [6] we now use the plane composition textbook, most of the focus is on the exploration of the form of the law of the "form" on the knock, the student's work is too much imitation component, the form of heavy flavor, the meaning of the creation is not strong, ignoring the cultivation of students' creative thinking ability, so that the composition of the teaching of the textbook has become a mere imitation of the eight courses. Some teachers even plane composition one-sided understanding of the sketch after another reproduction of the handmade class, into a continuation of the relevant handmade classroom practice techniques. For example, most of the time is spent on letting students carry out the basic shape grouping and sketching gradient composition, the result is that they can't well grasp the graphic creative purpose of plane composition, resulting in shallow and simplistic understanding of plane composition. No wonder some people even put forward in the art and design syllabus to cut off the terrible idea of graphic composition class, and replace it with "graphic creativity" to teach modeling methods and improve innovative thinking. The main reason for this situation is that now some institutions of graphic composition teaching is not enterprising, dead dogma, so that it deviates from the original original intention of the creators of graphic composition - to release and explore the creativity of students. The author thinks that graphic composition is an organism, which should be improved and enriched continuously. From its origin, Kandinsky and Eaton in the Bauhaus period used this kind of "basic course" to train the students' modeling, aesthetics and creativity, and many chapters in the textbook of "Creative Graphics" can be found in the theory of graphic composition. Many chapters in the textbook of "Graphic Creativity" can be found in the relevant theories of plane composition. Therefore, we should have a sense of crisis for the teaching of this course of graphic composition, can only continue to seek new and different, to learn from and draw on the excellent results of others and nutrition to enrich their own, in order to let the graphic composition to continue to maintain and develop, or else, the prospect is inconceivable. www.dolcn.com

3 Reform Measures for the Teaching of Graphic Composition

Based on the three shortcomings of the teaching of the existing graphic composition, we can see that the teaching of graphic composition has been a very important part of the development of the graphic composition of students. Teaching the three drawbacks, the author based on years of teaching experience to put forward personal three ideas, I hope to play a role in throwing a brick to attract jade.

3.1 Patterns as a bridge between drawing and composition

By the influence of traditional art education, our art and design professional foundation courses, favoring figurative, focus on reproduction. I found in teaching, from the full tone sketching, structural sketching, all of a sudden transition to the plane composition class, students are difficult to accept. Therefore, I used the traditional patterns between drawing and composition to inspire students' creative thinking and cultivate their interest in learning, such as doing some bipartite continuous and quadripartite continuous skeletal composition series of assignments. Chinese traditional pattern focuses on learning from nature, finding beauty in natural forms and abstracting natural forms into decorative patterns. Traditional pattern and modern plane composition, the former is a kind of preliminary abstraction, is the subjectivity is strong "imagery composition", the latter is more rational, pay attention to the analysis of "abstract composition", and pay attention to the application of material texture and so on. Traditional pattern from the natural image, remove the texture, leaving the appearance, while the plane composition can be completely mathematical reasoning, is the use of abstract points, lines, surfaces, and the composition of the form of the law, the abstraction of the basic shape and bone training, the form of its sense of form is very strong, the world general, but the lack of humanistic connotations. The author thought that plane composition is just a mark in the long history of people's understanding of nature, transforming nature to serve mankind in the modernist period. In fact, the Chinese pattern form contains a lot of laws of modern composition, which is a relationship between tradition and modernity, inheritance and development. Therefore, in the teaching of plane composition, the traditional pattern "imagery composition" and modern "abstract composition" organic combination, will be conducive to the teaching of plane composition.

3.2 Innovation is the concept of computer and hand-drawing is only a means

"New, skillful, different, beautiful" is the author of the graphic composition work of the four words of grading requirements, the first is the innovation of the "new", of course, in order to realize the above requirements, the choice of means of expression is also worthwhile. Of course, in order to realize the above requirements, the use of means of expression is also worth paying attention to the choice of issues. Innovation is a concept, computers and hand-drawing are only means. Nowadays, we have entered the digital society, the world civilization has entered the electronic information of the knowledge economy era, our composition teaching methods and means must keep up with the development of the times, to be innovative, can not only rely on the board, but also combined with multimedia courseware, the means of expression need not be limited to the hand-drawn, but also can be combined with computer-aided design. In the teaching of plane composition, the computer is easier than the pen is easier to store, fast and convenient operation tools, can save a lot of time to develop thinking. In addition, from the teaching link should re-adjust the time sequence of students' computer drawing software courses, can be introduced in the freshman year of computer teaching, while teaching the theory of plane composition, combined with computer teaching demonstrations, such as the production of basic shapes, grouping, and related forms of the law of the example of the production, etc., so that the students know that the application of convenient computer means can be accomplished by the complex composition of the work. It should be declared that the computer and hand-drawing are only means of expression of plane composition work, there is no need to separate the two, but according to the needs of different types of work, the choice of means of expression and tools.

3.3 by the law of form to the theme of composition

Contemporary graphic composition "law of form" contains aesthetic principles of the formal laws and means of expression of the composition of the means of manipulation, the author will be the composition of the law of form is summarized as a gathering of dispersion (dense, emission); deformation (gradient, specific, similar, transformation); balance rhyme (symmetry, repetition, **** shape). , repetition, *** shape); number series (proportion, division) and other four parts. When we teach the Law of Situation, on the one hand, we explain its concepts, and on the other hand, we have to teach more demonstrations with excellent cases. Therefore, how to change the teaching from imitation of the Law of Form to the discovery of the students' potential artistic ability, to a creative activity, that is, how to realize the transition from imitation to self-awareness, and to cultivate creativity, is the basic topic to be solved by constituting the teaching. In order to realize the best way to come out from the shadow of imitation under the law of form, the best way is the theme composition training, setting up a meaningful theme to study to realize and perfect it. That is to say, after the students have basically mastered and understood the law of form, they should set up some representative theme composition assignments, such as the addition of the Gestalt completion part of the "flower and wood" (heterogeneous isomorphism), "Zhang Guan Li Dai" (homogeneous isomorphism), the visual perception association part of the "sweet and sour, bitter and bitter", the "sweet and sour, bitter and bitter", and the "sweet and sour, bitter and bitter", the "sweet and sour, bitter and bitter". The part of the "sweet and sour", "joy, anger, sadness and happiness" and other thematic training, which on the one hand can stimulate the students' enthusiasm for creation and creative play, on the other hand, can also review and deepen the subjective understanding of the formal laws learned. In this regard, we can learn from Mr. Lin Jiayang's "Graphic Creativity", which will give us a lot of references and inspirations for the composition of related themes.

Conclusion

In the means of expression, the computer and hand-drawn there is no superiority or inferiority, 20 years ago, the author is to use hand-drawn to complete the work of graphic composition, and today, looking at some of the students are still in their teacher's requirements, a little bit of a stroke of the pen and paper tools hand-operated, the feelings of the other side of the question of hand-drawn or creative importance, why the computer and hand-drawn in opposition to it? I don't know that they are only tools and means of expression, and the cultivation of creative ability is the fundamental problem that the teaching of graphic composition has to solve. www.dolcn.com

Our era, design has become the golden key to the creative industry, and the most important thing in design education is to cultivate students' innovative thinking. The graphic composition course is a teaching activity that can be used to enhance the expression of graphic beauty, and its extended efficacy lies in the ability to liberate students' creativity and explore their artistic talents. Composition includes the exploration of both design language and design thinking, but nowadays the teaching of graphic composition in some colleges and universities still favors the formal language research of the former and neglects the cultivation of innovative design thinking of the latter. It should be emphasized that we can't regard plane composition as a simple means of modeling, but should be regarded as an artistic concept and way of thinking to realize the purpose of modeling. Practice will prove that the theme of composition is to solve the problem from the simple imitation of the law of form of the strange circle towards the independent innovation of one of the best way, I hope that through the reform of the teaching of plane composition, so that the plane composition really become an effective course to cultivate graphic creativity.

(Give me the points oh!)