Jo's Old Site

I’ve almost completed the first of Brenda’s B group lessons, and this lesson is about positive and negative spaces; as Brenda points out that an artist who can identify these two things can greatly enhance their drawings. Then you might want to know what is a positive space: a positive space is the space within the object that we are trying to draw, and negative space is on the outside of the object or the space around it. Brenda also says that we need to be able to measure distances visually and also be able to draw from our observations. And says once we have grasp a understanding of this we can then draw accurately without consciously focusing on the various stages.

As the first thing that we need to do before we draw is that we need to know where to look, remembering that viewfinders can help us focus on the objects that we are trying to draw; we also need to recognise shapes like circles, ovals, squares, and also rectangles etc… as after drawing a shape we can then pinpoint where the contour lines are. And Brenda says that a contour drawing is a drawing of lines that forms a shape.

Also shapes are not the only thing that is important with positive and negative space, as the size of the picture that we are drawing is important too as for instance: when we’re drawing people we need to be able to tell the difference between adults, and children, young, and old, and male, or female.