Elements of Design: Day 2

Today we continued our exploration of line, with emphasis on using line to build structure.

This is what I was thinking yesterday. They look like root forms, and I'm completely in love with the quality of the fine lines. 

This morning, switching from ink to charcoal and pencil, we produced another round of line studies. The study below shows the same branching structure that I've been fiddling with in a combination of ink, pencil, and charcoal. The same branching structure is there, but it's simplified. 

By afternoon we were working on creating thumbnail ink sketches of structures built from lines. A couple pages of these resulted in the idea at bottom right. The branching structure has simplified into sort of a budded stem.

Then we explored variations on an individual design with more thumbnails in black, white, and a mid-tone gray. Clearly some of these are better than others!

And finally, we did a larger scale rendering (6x6") of one design...

...which we then produced as a cut paper collage. I have to say that I'm pleased with both the process and the result. It's really nice when it turns out that way in a workshop, and a fine way to end the day.