Decorating an Oblong Shape.
The oblong is a favorite shape for book-covers, envelopes, card-cases, portfolios, and other articles that can be made in the school-room. Hundreds of objects about you in school and at home are also based, in their proportions, on the oblong. Think of the books, boxes, rugs, doors, and windows, that you constantly see. They are nearly always shaped like an oblong. You will be interested to know some of the ways in which decorations for these objects are planned. In a rug or a book-cover, for instance, we often wish a design similar to that shown in Sketch A. In planning for this, a smaller oblong was drawn within the larger one. The lines of the smaller one were used as construction lines, and these were modified in the same way as were the construction lines of the square on [page 87].
In Sketch D, the diameters of the oblong were drawn and the semi-diameters bisected. Then these points were connected. In both Sketch A and Sketch D, all construction lines not used in the design were erased.
Draw two oblongs not less than eight inches high, and wide enough to make a panel of pleasing proportions. Plan and draw designs similar to, but not exactly like, those shown in Sketches A and D.
How to Use Shapes from Nature in Design.
If all our designs were like those which can be made by following the construction lines of certain definite shapes, we would very likely grow tired of seeing so much decoration of that kind. We may get many ideas of beautiful lines and shapes from a plant or a flower, and we may use these ideas in making designs, as the drawings on this page and the next will show.
Look at the sketch of the marsh-marigold, and then at the small drawings at the right. A is a petal, B is a stamen, C is a side view of the flower, showing three petals and a stem, D is a leaf, and E a bud and stem. In these sketches the lines are even, the shapes are regular, and all "accidents of growth" are omitted. Sometimes the shapes were drawn larger than their true size, and sometimes the parts were separated, as in C and E. We need not copy just what we see, but we may modify shapes or change their size and arrangement to suit the spaces which they are to fill.