Here's what I want you to do: get a chair, any chair, this will be your subject. Sit about six feet away from the chair with your drawing lap desk with a few sheets of paper on it, and have your picture frame handy. First, with
one eye closed, just look at the chair for a minute. Try to look at the spaces between the chair parts; in between the legs, the space between the back uprights, under the arm rests. These are the areas that you will draw, and not the chair itself. Just as if you would normally draw all the positive spaces in a drawing and all the negative spaces just fall into place, if you do the opposite and draw all the negative spaces, the positive spaces will fall into place.
Drawing the negative space, your logical mind will not try and assign a "symbol" to the shape because it's not a shape it knows.
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Use this chair if you'd like - click
to enlarge. |
Now use a straight edge and segment your paper with two lines just as your picture frame is. Draw these lines lightly because you may want to erase them when you're finished with the drawing. Holding your picture frame in your non-drawing hand frame the chair with your picture frame any way you'd like. It might be best if the chair filled up most of the space of the frame. Now, looking through the frame, look again at the negative spaces in the chair. Make a mental note as to where the negatives are falling in relation to the crossed lines on the picture frame.
Find a negative shape on the chair that is close to the center
of the crosslines, and find that same area on your paper and
draw that negative shape on your paper. Does the shape you
drew line up relative to the crosslines on the paper as the shape on the
real chair lines up with it's crosslines on the frame? Keep referring back to your subject as much as possible and be mindful of where the outlined shape starts and ends in relation to the crosslines on your frame.
Now that you have your first shape drawn, move on to the next shape, probably one that is near to the shape you just drew. Keep in mind the distance
and angles between the shapes on your subject and try and put that shape
on your paper right where you see it on your subject. If there are straight lines in your shapes don't worry about making them EXACTLY straight, just freehand the line and get an
approximate straight line. Keep adding your negative space shapes until you have drawn them all.
The proportions of your drawing may be a little bit off
because you guessed at the distances between the shapes.
That's OK if it's a bit off, you can still see the chair
inside the shapes you drew, right? To make it a bit easier to see you could lightly shade in the positive shapes of the chair, or better yet, shade in the negative shapes you drew.
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Here's what mine looked like... |
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Draw the contour of a fork. |
Now you should have a nice drawing of your chair that has no detail inside the chair itself.
I know it was a bit difficult because your logical mind kept trying to muscle
in and make you draw shapes you knew. Think back on your thought process as you drew. You thought things like "I see a curve here that comes right into a straight line that now turns a right angle." I hope you didn't think things like "This leg connects with this
cross member and this back upright connects to the seat of the chair." Drawing the negative spaces of an object should get you thinking in terms of space,
forms, and shapes. Further, it should help you break your "symbol" habit of just drawing not what you actually see but what your logical mind remembers you seeing and drawing when you were a
kid.
Drawing the chair might have been hard for you because of all the straight
lines. I know, I have trouble with straight lines too. (Look again at my attempt at
the chair - Ugh!). You should try and do another negative shape drawing with
another chair, or something else that doesn't have so many straight lines. Try
something simpler like a fork or something.
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