Graphic arts from the middle ages for practice on composition

No comments // Sep 27th, 2008

I found some really useful files i had for a practice in one of my classes at the faculty. And it really helped me learn composition and how to position abstract elements and view and read it as a whole. And since print started in middle age their process of duplicating art was pretty time consuming and hard. The professor showed us a print matrix he made in his days of learning graphic print the old way, with wood and those cutting tools. It was inverted and had a lot of detail in it. And i really mean A LOT.

We have Photoshop today and can undo or delete our mistakes in the history. But just by looking at that print matrix for a second i noticed that each cut had to be the right one from the first try. It was about A3 format and lines were one by one. But the biggest thing that stroked me also was, it had to be inverted and mirrored so the picture would be good when printed!

Anyway the composition practice was inspired by the middle age graphic art prints. We got couple of sheets of paper where there were black and white copies of the middle age style. Our goal was to cut down the elements that were on a abstract level and then using the to make a composition.

Above is a sample image of one of the sheets. I’ll post a link below so you can download all of them and work the composition practice for yourself.

Starting the composition practice

So the first step is to find interesting elements and cut them out. As you zoom in on them you can still see the unique style of each line that is only made by a middle age graphic technique, it’s hard to fake these with photoshop. Here’s a image of some of my elements i have chosen:

Now when having these little elements, you need to think in a abstract way and position them so they work well with each other, connect them and make a balance. Add or remove items and see what it does. Spots and small circles have a really big impact in a composition. Triangles are also useful and powerful. Try using the shape/anti shape effect.

You will be finished, when you’ll get to the point, when if you take a element away, or add a element, the whole composition isn’t really going to work anymore.

Here are 2 examples that i have made: