by James H. Pence

In Tuesday’s blog I mentioned something called “negative space.”

Negative space drawing almost sounds like some weird, astronomical concept that you need a Ph.D. to understand. Actually, it’s a pretty simple idea. Instead of drawing an object, you draw the space in and around the object.

Scratching your head?

Let me give you an illustration that will make it crystal clear.

I stumbled upon negative space drawing when I was a boy, and I didn’t even know what I was doing. How did I do it? Actually, it’s a little embarrassing.

When I was little, I loved Superman. I ran around the house, using a bath towel as a cape, leaping tall buildings with a single bound. Sort of. Anyway, I had a blast being Superman and saving the world every day. So great was my obsession that eventually my mother replaced my towel-cape with a real (homemade) red Superman cape. It even had the iconic “S” logo on it.

I was in heaven!

But, alas, I grew older and eventually became too embarrassed to run around with my cape. But I still loved Superman. But now (among other things) I wanted to draw the famous “S” logo. I tried and tried, but just couldn’t get the S to look right. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t.

I could get the diamond shape that formed the outside of the logo, but whenever I tried to draw the S, it came out misshapen. After repeated failures, I became frustrated and almost gave up.

Then I had a moment of inspiration.

Rather than draw the S, I decided to try drawing the spaces and shapes around the S. I figured that if I drew those shapes correctly, then I would wind up with a correctly drawn Superman “S”.

And I was right.

For trademark and copyright reasons, I can’t reproduce a Superman logo here as an example.

(However, if you go to the following link, you can see one for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_logo.)

Instead, let’s work from a stock photo of a red deck chair.

If you try to draw the chair, you might find yourself struggling to reproduce the image accurately. But if you will focus on the spaces and shapes around and under the chair, you may be surprised at how easy it is to draw.

To make it easier, I have blacked out the image of the chair so that you can look at the various shapes that occur around it, and I've colored those shapes gold. Try focusing on the shapes and draw them. If you draw the shapes correctly (and in the right proportion to one another), you will, by default, draw the chair.

Give it a try.

Better yet, get a copy of the Superman logo and try drawing the “S” for yourself.

You’ll have a super time! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)