Drawing With Shapes

Drawing or Painting?

There are two kinds of computer software for creating pictures:

• Painting programs: you use brushes, spray cans and fill tools to 'paint' colour onto the canvas. Similar to hand-drawing. Also known as 'bitmap' images.
• Drawing programs: you build up your picture by placing shapes onto the canvas. Any shape can be altered at any time. These can be enlarged for printing without loss of quality. Also known as object-based or vector images.

With a drawing program you can 'build up' a complex picture from simple pieces. A few green triangles, some white ovals and a yellow circle can be arranged to form a flower. Those items can then be grouped into a single object, which can be duplicated many times to create a flower-filled meadow! Variations in colour, position and size add 'realism' to the picture.

More than the sum of the parts

We see this principle at work throughout God's world - from similar-looking cells He creates skin, bone, blood, hair. He fashions those into arms, wings, eyes & scales. From those he makes fish, birds, animals and, in our case, people. But He doesn't stop there. He groups different kinds of people together to meet each other's needs - and then calls them a body!

1 Cor 12:14-20 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

Building blocks

Use a drawing program (such as Open Office Draw, Draw Plus or Corel Draw) to:

• place circles and rectangles onto the canvas (background)
• move the shapes around
• resize shapes using the 'handles' at each corner
• rotate shapes using the rotate tool
• change each shape's colour
• copy and paste shapes

• try 'grouping' shapes and resizing/rotating the group
• try 'layering' shapes - push one behind another, or select one at the back and bring it to the top of the pile
• try 'aligning' shapes so they all line up horizontally or vertically

Build a picture

Use different shapes & colours to create a picture similar to this picture called 'The Snail' by Henri Matisse. He used pieces of paper painted with 'gouache' to suggest the spiral shape of a snail's shell.

©1999 Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Web Links

• Animated introduction to 'The Snail' by Henri Matisse

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Related pages: Drawings by Class Three; Open Office Year Seven ICT

Category: ICT, Art

Author: Mr Kershaw