Negative Space

For these pieces the class looked at the concept of negative space. Negative space is the space around the object or objects, an example that was used was shadows and shadow puppets. In drawing negative space the artist basically outlines the object, separating it from the space behind it (negative space), without drawing any of the lines inside, so that at the end you have ultimately drawn all the negative space around the object without drawing the object itself. In the first piece we used our hands and put them in positions to create interesting negative space. I then challenged myself to draw an arrangement of stools which proved to be much more difficult.

My process was to start at the top or bottom of the paper and from there go up or down, just doing the outline. I erased and redid lines as needed to make sure that everything lined up. Once the full outline was complete I added shading around the different shapes to make them stand out more.

In the first piece on top I chose this hand position to draw because it created two different spaces between my fingers, making the negative space more interesting. For the second drawing I chose to draw the stools because I wanted to challenge myself. This was especially difficult because of the specific curves and specific straight lines that were needed in certain places, making it hard to line everything up and also making any mistakes easily visible. I added the shading on the outlines to create artificial contrast in a sense. I needed to separate the for ground from the background, the positive space from the negative space without using different colors. So I made the lines separating them dark and apparent so that the two could be distinguished.