drawanyway.com

Negative space is one of those ‘eureka’ techniques that, once you learn, you will never look back. It gives you a completely new way of approaching drawings. Dauntingly complex subjects suddenly become quite easy. Your drawings take on a new air of professionalism. And yet, it’s remarkably simple.

It’s a technique that art teachers are fond of passing on - I’ve heard many a teacher explain it to a class while I modelled for them (”see the area between that sagging tummy and the sagging bosom?”), but I am almost certain that it originated in a book called ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ (there are links to it below, and also in the sidebar, where I am particularly pleased to see it being called ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Bra’. A whole new technique, I reckon). More about this book one day soon, no doubt, but for now let me talk more about negative space.

Negative space is the space between objects. If you imagine a tree against the sky, the negative space is the sky showing through between the leaves and branches. If you are drawing the human figure, the negative space could be a number of things - the triangle between a bent arm and the torso, plus the triangle between two wide legs, etc.

The trick is to draw these shapes, not the object itself. Why? Because we often think we ‘know’ how to draw a person, or a tree, or whatever it is we are drawing, and we fall back on the same old shapes we have always used to do so. The negative space is different each time, so we have to really look before we draw it.

So, now I’ve written about this trick, illustrators all over the world will be putting away their materials and complaining that their secret is out.

The task’s obvious, really, isn’t it? Choose your subject, don’t draw it, draw the negative space, then come back here and post it.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - amazon.co.uk

Drawing on the right side of the Brain - amazon.com

Here’s a quick sketch I did to try to demostrate the techniqe more visually. My husband heroically agreed to lie down and read while I drew him (and yes, I did notice that I fudged the book, thanks - but Drawanyway is about drawing anyway, if you recall).

OK, so far, so nothing special.  But here’s the same sketch where I’ve tried to highlight what I drew first. I didn’t draw his face or his clothes - I drew the shapes you see filled with blue.

Come to think of it, Photoshop lets me demonstrate that quite clearly: Hopefully, you can see how this leaves me with a husband-shaped hole that I haven’t had to draw myself; it just happens by virtue of drawing the space around him.