How To Improve Your Drawing With Negative Space

A recurring message in art classes and tutorials is that as a beginning student, you should: “draw what you see not what you know”, this can be easily done by drawing with negative space. You have no previous knowledge of the negative space unlike the object itself, therefore you would have to draw by focusing on what is in front of you. Drawing with negative space makes it easy to abide by the laws of perspective and foreshortening.

If you are just starting art and design, it is easy to assume that your work is to fill up the blank page but in truth, you need to work with the blank page. An artwork/design is a combination of both positive and negative spaces on the page.

Asides from helping you with the compositional elements of your drawing, paying attention to negative spaces can ensure that everything fits together with the page. A major mistake every beginner makes is to start a drawing without due consideration of the page, only to realize towards the end that the drawing is going off page at one point and too tiny at the other.