For several weeks at Studio b.‘s figure drawing sessions, we have been focusing on negative space. This week our focus was the silhouette of the figure, essentially the contour line which separates negative space from positive space. Our instructor Heather Clements says that when the contour is interesting, that’s half the battle. Learning to accurately draw the contour comes first, and after that the artist decides what elements to exaggerate to make the contour more expressive. Heather directed us to fill in the positive shape so that it reads as a single shape. I had a lot of fun with this exercise, since I was thinking I would not be turning out anything worth keeping, which freed me to use some colors and textures I might not ordinarily use. The night passed quickly. In this post I have decided to also include all of my warm-up drawings, to show the differences in approach to each pose, and to give an idea of what is actually happening in a 2½ hour figure drawing session at Studio b. The final drawing is shown first, followed by the initial 30-second and one-minute gestures, progressing up to 4-minute gestures, all of which I usually end up throwing away, and then the 15-minute silhouette drawings.
Negative space is the space surrounding the “subject”. Negative spaces which are bounded by the subject are called negative shapes. The boundaries of negative shapes also can be the edge of the art piece, or the edge of another shape. Heather showed examples of negative space, and we spent the entire 2½ hours finding and filling in negative space, from warm-ups through extended poses. Well, there was one pose where I just couldn’t stand any more ignoring of the form, and I quickly drew a rough approximation of the light on the form, below right. Otherwise, in each drawing, the positive shape was drawn, or rather, not drawn, as a silhouette. Our model was very cooperative, positioning to create empty spaces in his pose. When negative shapes are interesting, they can be very helpful in defining the form. We recognize many things by the silhouette of the shape. So even though the interior of the form was not developed, anyone looking at these drawings can tell that they are depictions of a male figure.
Sometimes our studio workspace is overflowing with people, but on this night I was the only student. I am so grateful that Colleen Duffley, owner of Studio b., continues to provide this creative opportunity through thick and thin. And Heather Clements, the instructor, talked to me as if I were a whole classroom of students. She is such a professional. She drew along with me, practicing the same exercises. Later she showed me examples of Egon Schiele’s work, pointing out how he used negative space to make his figurative work even more interesting. Such intense focus on negative space is sure to make me more aware of it in my compositions, even as I have been “seeing” more negative shapes in my ordinary daily activities today.
Live figure drawing is often very hurried, and the whole time is spent drawing only the model. It is tempting to omit essential elements in the surroundings, because the artist always thinks he or she can draw them later. As a result many figure drawings end up with a figure just floating in space, without context or compositional “anchoring”. Heather asked the Studio b. figure drawing group for a second week to continue to include backgrounds in our drawings. She showed examples from several books, discussing different artists’ inclusion of background, or in many cases, invention of background. One of the examples was a figurative piece, tied down similar to Gulliver by the Lilliputians, and it reminded me of a playground sculpture of Gulliver that I had seen in Valencia, Spain, where the ties holding him down actually were hanging knotted ropes that children could climb on, and parts of his clothing formed slides and crawl spaces for them. The children interacting with the sculpture then became the Lilliputians. With those images in my head, I drew my own version of the figure in Lilliput.
Gulliver Park, Valencia, Spain
I first drew the figure in white conte on a dusty blue charcoal paper, and then using graphite I drew the Lilliputians tying her down, with a little cityscape in the distance. (Click on drawing for detailed image.)
I drew the next pose as it was and incorporated some of the studio behind the model, including a silhouette of one of the artists.
All of the artists worked hard on the assignment, each making a drawing that was remarkably different from the others, and each with success.
