Sometimes it’s easy to lose perspective. Like when it’s dark, damp and dreary outside and your alarm sounds its shrill tones at 6.30am – you feel like there could be nothing worse than getting out from under the cosy confines of your duvet. When you do finally make the leap (after hitting snooze five times, if you’re anything like me) it transpires things aren’t so bad.
It seems the same goes with drawing. Tonight, our class focused on perspective. Instead of drawing the objects in front of us (chairs and stools, in case you can’t tell from the pictures below), we were tasked with drawing the ‘negative space’ around them. This is harder than it sounds – try it. So instead of drawing the outline of the object as you usually would, with interweaving or connecting lines, you draw only the space in between the physical thing you’re looking at. In the case of a chair, this means if you can see two legs but due to the perspective you’re looking from there’s no space between then, then they should appear almost as one – with just the outer edge of both visible. The image shouldn’t really appear 3D but more like a stencil of the shape.
I’m not sure I’m explaining this well. And from my pictures, you’ll see I didn’t really achieve this but it was a useful exercise in terms of how you judge empty space in drawing and the effect this has on the size and shape of the objects you draw.
I may need to put some practice in here – I don’t think this will be solved by hitting the snooze button.
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