Transcript 4. Drawing - negative space.ppt

NEGATIVE
SPACE
NEGATIVE SPACE
“It may seem hard to believe but if care and attention is lavished on
the negative shapes, the forms will take care of themselves.”
(Betty Edwards)
As Betty Edwards has told us and tried to get us to do in the former
exercises, we are going to continue concentrating on shapes as we
draw and not think of the object we are drawing. But this time we are
going to be drawing the empty shapes around the object and the
empty trapped spaces within the object.
We will use a viewfinder for this exercise and draw the spaces we
see not the object. Drawing the object would be drawing the positive
shapes; drawing the empty spaces around and within the object is
drawing the negative shapes.
1. Hold up your viewfinder, close one eye, and look at the chair through the
viewfinder. Adjust the viewfinder to frame in the chair tightly so that the
chair is touching the edges of the viewfinder on all sides. Mark tangent
points on the viewfinder where the chair touches. This will help you
relocate it again in the same position.
2. You do not want your drawing to be the size of the viewfinder, so you
enlarge the drawing area as shown in the second drawing above. It is
important that you draw the same tangent points on your paper
3. Now draw the outside spaces you see around the chair while looking
through the viewfinder. After you complete the spaces around the outside,
draw the inside trapped spaces while looking through the viewfinder.
Do not draw any positive lines. Do not verbalize or think about what
the object is. Concentrate only on the negative shapes.
First you draw the shapes around the outside of the chair. Then you draw
the shapes trapped on the inside of the chair.
When the drawing is
complete, you will shade in
the negative shapes. This
is to be done as
homework. You may use a
marker, India ink, or black
acrylic.
NEGATIVE SPACE AND CONTOUR COMBO
“Because learning to draw is about learning to see relationships
between things, it is important to see the spaces between shapes as
well as the shapes themselves.” Betty Edwards
In this exercise we are going to combine drawing negative spaces
and contour drawing. You will think about the relationship between
negative and positive shapes.
Steps: 1. Draw the object in negative space.
2. Draw a shape in which you contour an area.
The contoured area must be at least ¼ of the total