Practice makes Perfect

Both John and Lian completed homework related to our last session to practise skills of true observation and to the define lines, edges and contours of real objects. I was really pleased with their home studies, which displayed improved observation and development of their awareness of  both contours and spaces.

  

 This week the focus was on format and negative spaces.

The concept of negative space is a tricky one but basically is this; the shapes created by the spaces within and around the lines and contours of an object, are as essential to accurate drawing as the lines themselves. If the spaces are not well observed and accurately recreated on the page then the drawing will not appear 'true'.

So our practise today was to create a drawing by copying the outlines left by spaces. Tolouse Lautrec's drawing 'Le Jockey' was a good beginning...here are the results of copying the drawing's spaces upside down..................................................................................and the original

 

The copies however were achieved by drawing the shapes of the spaces...not the objects themselves. Pretty cool results which pleased us all.

Finally we did a triptych (three panels) based on real objects...drawing the objects first..then the negative spaces only.

The final panel..(not shown) was a smaller section of the negative spaces which were drawn into the format of the piece in its exact position.    

I am looking forward to seeing their homework over the next two weeks. Stay tuned!