Positive and Negative Space

Huh?? What’s that mean?

• POSITIVE space is anything that PHYSICALLY takes up space..– You, me, table, etc

• NEGATIVE space is the “air” in between– It “fills in” and surrounds the positive space

Black or White?

• Usually when drawing, we draw in the positive space (the object) with some medium like pencil.

• Example….

The white surrounding

area is the NEGATIVE

SPACE

But….• We can ALSO do this the opposite way,

where we color in the NEGATIVE space in the dark medium, and leave the POSITIVE space white.

• Example…..

More………

Make sure you use a RULER to line the images up….

• The NEGATIVE space in between the positive spaces makes shapes that are JUST AS IMPORTANT as the positive ones

• We can use it to help MEASURE the distances in between sections that we want to draw– We don’t want too much negative space

(composition and placement of elements!) but without it things look jumbled and can be placed on the page incorrectly.

Our project…

• deals with positive and negative space.

• We are doing a REVERSE value drawing, paying attention to the NEGATIVE space just as much as the positive space.

Materials

• Scratchboard!

• Start with a SKETCH of what you want to show – PLAN YOUR COMPOSITION

• You are going to carve away the NEGATIVE space

• Use hatching and crosshatching to add value and dimension to the resulting POSITIVE space

And a fun example…

What do you do when you find a dirty car?

(A) Write “WASH ME". (B) Write funny things. (C) Do a pretty drawing.

THIS is SCOTT WADE.

Check out what he does with the dirty cars that he finds.

A DIRTY CAR.

AN OUTLINE OF THE WORK.

STEP TWO

FINISHED JOB- A COPY OF THE PICTURE BYC.M. Coolidge “A Friend in Need”.

OTHER WORKS

“MONA LISA” BY DA VINCI, IN THE BACKGROUND A “STARRY NIGHT” BY VAN GOGH.