Theme: Negative Space
Due Date: October 5, 2013
When I was in college, our drawing instructor stacked up an
odd assortment of stools, old chairs, manikins, and wadded up newsprint. We had several assignments using this mountain
of stuff as our subject matter. One day,
our assignment was to draw the air around the objects, NOT the objects
themselves. In other words, we were to
focus on the shape of the spaces between the objects.
This is a technique recommended by Betty Edwards in her well
known Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain books. Betty tells about Bugs Bunny running through a
door and leaving a rabbit shaped hole in the door. If you were to draw the shape of the door (or
the negative space), you will have drawn the shape of the rabbit. It is amazing
how well this technique can improve the way you see and draw.
Try it with
fabrics! You can use real objects or
photographs you have taken. You can use
any subject matter that has interesting shapes or openings.
Having taught this technique in my high school art classes,
I was always impressed with the resulting drawings. Give it a shot!!! You might try a quick fabric study of a chair
that has interesting open spaces. Don’t
cut out a chair shape, instead, cut out the shapes of the air around the chair.
Negative space, in art, is the space around
and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when
the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or
artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic
effect as the "real" subject of an image. The use of negative space
is a key element of artistic composition.
Here are some examples:
This is an image of a drummer. As in the one with my son on a stool, I
started with some wild fabrics as a
background, then added shapes for the negative spaces. The wild fabrics became my positive
shapes. You may want to simplify and use
solids or more tame fabrics.
Here are two paintings by Hessam Abrishami where negative
space is emphasized. It really is as
important as the positive figures!!
Here is the same idea in a small watercolor study. If you paint the negative shapes, then the
positive ones appear.
Finally, a student piece that plays with positive and
negative shapes, as well as implied shapes, where your eye completes the tank
top on the right, even if it is not delineated.
And one last word: have fun with this!
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