Objective: Formulate an image/idea by only drawing its background.
- Positive space: images appearing on the page surface; the things; the stuff
- Negative space: the space in between and around the things; anything appearing farther back.
Use only negative space to visually interpret three of the following subjects: clouds, whipped cream, Moby Dick, Jaws, sugar, ghost, salt, polar bear, flour, smoke, vanilla ice cream cone, and steam. The subjects themselves should not be drawn; only the surrounding negative space and possibly areas in shadow should be addressed, and only in black. In designing, the images may be cropped to show only a portion of the subjects.
Use the smaller areas for preliminary drawings and the larger areas for final executions (in black ink).
No lines. No drawing of the thing. Just the space around it.
Helpful Resources:
This lesson is taken from Visual Literacy: A Conceptual Approach to Graphic Problem Solving, by Judith Wilde and Richard Wilde. It is available for viewing in Room 409. You can find some examples of solutions in the book.
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