Exercise 13 - Lesson on Proportion in art

Definition:  (noun) - Proportion is a principle of art that describes the size, location or amount of one element to another (or to the whole) in a work. It has a great deal to do with the overall hamrony of an individual piece.

When you are working on graphical art, you must be aware of each piece that you add or take away in relationship to the whole piece.  

Lets look at Picasso's collage.

  

On this first image I included marks to show where the image can be seperated into 1/2, 1/4 and diagonal lines through those marks.  I am trying to break up the image into even parts.  I just want to see if Picasso did some sort of work towards balancing the piece from the left to the right, the top to the bottom or maybe something else.

 What I noticed is that the bottom right area seems to have less "activity" and larger blocks of color.

What I then realized is that it balances the "more active" area in the upper left corner.  One area can be more active and to calm down that activity and balance it is a the bottom right.

Finally, what I noticed is that around the center, within the diagonal lines, there is a "hub" of line and shape.

Picasso is not as rigid with his proportions as Le Corbusier with his still life (the other image I had up) but he does seem to hold close to art and design principles of proportion...ok so he may be pushing the limits a bit but he does keep the piece, even if a collage, in control.