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This can be a good way to subtly suggest another element (in this case, leaves) without taking the focus away from your main subject matter. I wanted those leaves to be secondary so I just blocked in a few abstract shapes using my light blue background color, and left them alone. In the painting below, you can see how I deliberately painted in negative shapes around the leaves on the lower left side. However, I do like to use abstract elements in my paintings from time to time, and using negative spaces really helps me along. creating an abstracted representation of something is a difficult way to paint for me. It takes a bit of effort to look at negative space and draw it, but once you get the hang of it, it usually makes sketching easier, and even more fun! Negative space can help with abstracting an image Sometimes it was much easier to sketch the “holes” because they were simpler shapes. In the sketch above, I alternated between looking at the flowers themselves, and looking at the “holes” in between flowers and stems. On those occasions try sketching or blocking in the negative spaces to help you define your subject more accurately. Negative space can help you sketch your imagesĮvery artist has had trouble sketching the right sizes or shapes at one time or another. Take a few flowers out of the bouquet (for some internal negative space) crop in tighter and you may end up with even more beautiful shapes which can be the basis for a lovely composition. If you just crop in a bit, you can start to see interesting shapes form between the stems and around the flowers-you’ve turned one big negative space ino a variety of fascinating sections! A little creative cropping can help with this.įor example, this floral still life is very pretty, but the only negative space is the big background around the flowers. Negative space can play a big role in good composition, but sometimes you have to search for it. Your eye will continually move through and around the painting studying all the brushwork and placement of color. Negative space can add interest to your compositionĪ good composition will keep you looking. However, for the purposes of this article I will talk about it in regards to how I use it in my painting. Incidentally, negative space can also called “white space” or “breathing room” and it is a very important element in the design of logos, websites, and other graphics. all of those supporting shapes and colors are intriguing and important in their own right! Never underestimate the beauty of negative space. Those little glimmers of light through the leaves of a tree, the shape of the empty sky above a cityscape, or the space inside the handle of your coffee mug are examples of negative space.
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Negative space is visually just as important as positive space, and it’s the area around and in between your subject matter. We tend to “see” the positive space-the apple in a still life painting, the person in the portrait-but there’s always more to a painting than that! By Brandi Bowman in Art Tutorials > Painting TutorialsĮvery painting is composed of negative and positive space.