Positive and Negative Space

Drawing was a class that I personally looked upon with great excitement. From a very young age my ability to draw was a comfort to me and in some cases my strongest asset. Whether it was a quick solitary doodle or a laborious body of work, I found drawing and painting to be a source of fun and absolute freedom.

In this instance I was allowed to delve into the world of Positive and Negative Space. The concept of positive and negative space is to take an image and exclude all tone and detail to create block colours of either black or white. By doing this you are able to concentrate on the use of shape and space of an area.

Victor Vaserely

Our first objective was to produce a variety of monochromatic sketches from the college surroundings as a starting point for later pieces. Imagining how to produce a clean cut design that you can identify as being particular everyday objects is certainly a challenge that I had not encountered before; however it was not a challenge I couldn’t overcome. A method that I found helpful was to eliminate texture and colour from what I was drawing and focus on the basic structure of the shape. By training the eye to view blocks rather than tangible forms allows you to draw in a manner that shadows that of other positive and negative space artists.

Jackson Pollock - 'Convergence'

Using these drawings we were then asked to draw elements of each sketch to create an intriguing abstract piece. When I heard the word ‘abstract’, I could not help but recoil and despair as I thought of the work of Josef Albers, Jackson Pollock, and Pablo Picasso. All of whom were credible artists but chose to strip away any control from their work – as Picasso put it ‘I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.’ 

Edward Hopper - 'NightHawks'

My particular style followed the works of J.M.W Turner, John Everett Millais, and Edward Hopper – favourites of mine. Despite, my views I decided to throw myself into the process and create an abstract style of my own. I will not lie when I admit that my first few attempts were feeble, to say the least, but as with most things, I improved with practise. I was able to add elements of the more classical sense of painting to the my abstract interpretation to create pieces that I was proud of producing.