The Creative Power of 'Line'

The Creative Power of 'Line'

I never gave much thought about 'line' until now, and when I think about it, a line has creative power of its own. You see it everywhere in everyday life. If we look around at the buildings in our city or town, those buildings had their beginning in a form of lines on blueprints. On the highway, the lines in the road navigate to keep us in the right lanes as we are driving. Line has power to bring order. Yes, it does. Think back to early elementary school days... you had to 'line up' to go anywhere within the school. To lunch, the library, outside, etc... Even now, when we are going to wait in line to get into a concert or a movie, or to renew driver's license, we stand behind someone and someone stands behind us, etc... forming a LINE. So 'line' had a power to bring order and may I add, direction.

In the world of surface pattern design, a line has power. You may be thinking 'power? how?' Line has power because it becomes a 'master and servant' at the same time for the designer. It is a 'master' because the designer is dependant up it. He or she cannot create a design or drawing without it, and at the same time the line is a 'servant' because it yields to the designer's creative ideas, becoming anything from an abtract geometric to a lovely, loose peony. A line has power to create illusion... making something two dimensional appear three dimensional, something wide in space becoming narrow. Lines can create whatever the designer can conceive from his or her imagination. Even a straight line can be lovely when arranged with other lines in various colors or sizes.

Here is a simple exercise for you. Take a look around in your everyday life and see where you notice 'LINE' wherever you see it... in school children walking in line, a building, cans nicely lined on a shelf in your local grocery store, your own handwriting... yes, your handwriting because those letters are made from 'lines'. Once you have done this, in your not-so-busy moments, take some paper with a pen or pencil (or marker) and start to create a pattern or picture with 'line' in mind. See what your imagination comes up with. Allow yourself to create for about ten to twenty minutes. Maybe you can do this in quiet or with some music, but allow the LINE to be your 'master and servant' and see what you both create together.

Feel free to share the design(s) you've created or share your own thoughts about line. I know after reading this article, you won't look at 'line' the same way again :)