1.Texture as a basic element of the composition

Texture is one of the features that personalize the plane, as do the colour, shape and size. Texture is the tactile quality of the objects. For example, the feel and the texture of the skin of a tomato is very different from that of a rough wall. 

If we look  at a photograph of the surface of a tomato and another of the rough surface of a wall, we can visually perceive different textures . Therefore, the tactile quality of the object, its texture, can also be represented by graphic means. Graphic textures can be achieved manually and by technical means.

Using plots of points and lines can also provide tactile qualities to the paper.
An easy way to texturing a paper sheet manually  is to put it on a surface and rub it with a pencil (frottage).

There are artists such as Antoni Tàpies who give  great importance to the tactile qualities of the materials used in their  pieces. A stroke in one of his work is not only a shape, it is a material form, which has touch, texture. Tàpies uses a great variety of materials: matte and gloss paints, varnishes, sand, fabric, wood, paper, etc.

 

 There is, however, the work of the artists who developed the Cubist style, whose work is based on the working of the textures when reinterpreting the shape of objects that they represent. We will see examples of Cubist works by Picasso, Juan Gris, Duchamp,Hannah Höch etc.

 A typical Cubist painting depicts real people, places or objects, but not from a fixed viewpoint. Instead it will show you many parts of the subject at one time, viewed from different angles, and reconstructed into a composition of planes, forms and colours. The whole idea of space is reconfigured: the front, back and sides of the subject become interchangeable elements in the design of the work.

What is Collage?  

is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblages of different forms, thus creating a new whole.

A collage may sometimes include  magazine and newspaper clipping, ribbons, paint , bits of colored or handmade papers, portions of other artwork or texts, photographs and other found objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but this technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century as an art form of novelty.

Cubists are the inventors of this term.

Collage

Publish at Calameo or read more publications.

Below you can see some examples from Picasso. All of them are guitars and violins:

ACTIVITIES

1-Now you will build your guitar or violin in Picasso's style (collage in cubism style). 

You will need diferent materials like, sponges, baizes, aluminium foil, carton, newspapers, strings,

cardboard etc. Make a composition on a DinA3 sheet and when you are sure, paste it.

Is very important to use an homogeneous background. 

2- Making a Picasso style face portrait.

First of all, look the images below:

Take four or five photographs of your face from diferent angles (the profile,the  frontside...) . Then print them in black and white (no need to be quality images) and compose a new face with cuttings from the photographs in a Din A3 sheet. Paste it.

3- Now it's time to play a game:

CUBISM PORTRAIT


COLLAGE MACHINE