Once again, I talked about the so-called negative space. I had set up a still life consisting of a white plastic chair, tilted on a little prop, against a red back ground. The assignment was to draw the chair (the so-called positive space) by not drawing it at all, but instead by drawing the non-chair spaces that make it possible for us to see the chair (the so-called negative space). This 
works best when the object depicted is symmetrical, readily identifiable and seen from a weird angle. One student faced the chair from a symmetrical view and that drawing didn’t work. But one new student, Alejandra, was positioned so that her view of the chair was askew. Perfect. She worked on 18 x 24 paper with pencil. The page is riveting. You just want to look at this apparition. You see the chair by seeing everything that is non-chair. The brain tingles. Such a simple exercise, so easy to conceptualize, and yet so hard to “get.” This is how art works.
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 
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