In addition to yarn prep, I’ll start feeding my brain some basic images of shape and proportion, to start sketching. The 1847 Oliver Byrne edition of Euclid’s books is one of the most beautiful, eccentric books I’ve ever come across. When I consider the amount of design, preparation and labor it took to print an original copy of it, my eyes go fuzzy. Byrne developed his own symbolic shorthand of shapes and colors to illustrate Euclid’s principles. This visual code—which takes some getting used to if you want to use this as a mathematical text—results in a page full of modern, arresting compositions. They remind me a little of the aesthetics of the Frobel gift blocks and tiles that Frank Loyd Wright played with as a child. Taschen published a small, affordable edition of it. The colors and format are so stunning, I often use this (and sometimes my kiddo’s colorform shapes) as a prompt for thinking about harmonic balance in a composition.
