Today the subject of our lesson was gestalt, the psychology of perceiving patterns. The assignment was to represent the four properties that related to design in four panels. They are, as follows:
Proximity: Elements close together are seen as part of the same group or shape. This is demonstrated in the first panel, where a bunch of wobbly dohickamajigs seem to make one larger dohickamajig.
Closure: Familiar shapes can be seen as complete even when they are not. Take the implied giant circle in the second panel, which dwarves the tiny circles surrounding it without even existing.
Similarity: Elements are seen as the same group if they have a similar shape. This is seen in panel two and three, but three was really made to showcase it. Three is also sort of proximity if you think about it.
Continuity: If a number of points or shapes are aligned into a line or curve, they'll be recognized as a shape. The tail in panel four was originally hollow, with just a dotted outline, but the extreme whitespace stood out a bit too much. And hey: why does the whole thing look like a whale? Yup. Continuity.
It's fun review to explain the principles behind this project. There might be a lot of that at first while I'm still learning the fundamentals.
