Negative Space Drawing - 3 Ways To Apply It To Your Drawings
Notice how the negative spaces help your eyes flow through the image. Reference by Dynamic Muse.
Negative space drawing is a powerful drawing technique with many applications.
It can improve your portraits, figures, landscapes… really, any subject. And the best part: It’s fast to learn!
This article shows you 3 ways to apply negative space drawing to your work, covering anatomy, contour design, composition, and a bunch of other tips.
By the end, you’ll have a powerful new tool in your toolbox to create more beautiful drawings.
Let’s get into it!
What Is Negative Space?
Toned paper drawing in graphite with negative space marked in grey.
Negative space is the empty space around or in between the subjects of a drawing. The subject is the “positive" space.
Take a look at the drawing above. Do you see the triangle enclosed by the right arm, and the one enclose by the leg and the arm? Those are negative spaces. If you look closely there is also a tiny one near the belly.
All those contribute to the impact of the drawing in subtle ways, which we’ll explore next.
Why Should You Draw Negative Space?
Negative space contributes significantly to the impact of your image. With proper attention, negative space can:
Improve the composition of your picture
Make the figure or portrait feel more solid
Direct the eyeflow of the viewer
Enhance the feeling of form for the positive space around it
Help create “likeness”
Improve accuracy
And much more!
Let’s get into specific examples.
3 Ways To Apply Negative Space Drawing To Your Work
Application 1: Simplify Complex Anatomy
Negative space is a great tool to simplify complex anatomical structures while drawing.
When you encounter a pose where eyeballing your measurements is just too tough, it’s worth trying to draw using negative space. Here are two examples you will see often:
Legs
Legs can be hard to draw, as the upper and lower leg tend to have very unique curved silhouettes, that differ only slightly by leg, so it’s hard to get them right.
If the legs are in different positions within 3D space, it can complicate it even more.
Luckily negative space can help us here! Here’s the famous painting “Nude Egyptian Girl” by John Singer Sargent, with the negative space marked.
Notice how the negative space creates a feeling of depth.
As you can see the shape of the negative space alone creates a solid impression of the legs with depth and form. It also helps to see how the left leg differs from the right leg.
Next time you draw legs, draw the negative space in between the legs instead. It’ll help you a lot!
Arms
Drawing arms is another great application of negative space.
In this painting by Maxfield Parrish, “Image Of Griselda”, I marked the negative space between the arm and head yellow, and drew that structure in graphite on the right.
Clearly designed negative space makes the “positive” space around it feel more connected and solid.
As you can see the negative space makes the arm and head feel more solidly connected, and the abstract design of it improves the read and feel of the drawing.
The more you use this technique, you’ll notice that it tends to bring all parts of your image together.
Application 2: Contour Design
Negative space is a great tool for designing the contour, or silhouette of your figure or portrait. Let’s take a look at an example.
Side profile
In this painting by Tom Roberts, “Plink A Plonk”, the profile is encapsulated by a negative space, which I drew in graphite on the right.
Drawing the subject indirectly by drawing the negative space is often easier.
By drawing the negative space the unique curvature of the side profile becomes much easier to capture.
Instead of getting lost in the specific features, focus on drawing the abstract negative shape right, and the contour magically appears correctly.
Torso and other areas
Another way to use negative space is by inventing.
Take a look at this drawing by Michelangelo, where I connected certain areas figure to “invent” negative space.
Inventing negative space is an excellent technique that you can apply to any subject.
As you can see, the invented negative space makes it much easier to see the characteristic curves of the torso contour. With practice you can do this mentally by imagining the invented negative space, but you can also use light lines to actually draw them in.
Be creative and experiment with the applications.
Application 3: Composition
Another common negative space application is composition, meaning the arrangement of shapes and values in the picture.
Below is a painting by Maxfield Parrish called, “The Lantern Bearers”, with negative space marked in red.
Negative space is a crucial compositional tool.
As you can see the picture’s composition is heavily based on the arrangement, and the vibe of the negative spaces. In this case, the negative space creates a leaf-like pattern that contrasts the round spherical design of the lanterns, making them feel even more round.
There are many ways you can use negative space to enhance your compositions. Study the negative spaces in master paintings, and you’ll start to see it everywhere!
Where Negative Space Fits In Your Drawing Process
Now that you know about applications, let’s talk about process.
After all, you don’t want to stay stuck doing negative space studies, but have it improve your final drawings overall, not overpower them. Here’s how:
Process Application 1: Lay-in
The most obvious application of negative space drawing is in your lay-in and construction phase.
As you build the base of your drawing, simply make it a habit to at some point check and consciously design all the negative spaces.
Process application 2: Shading
As you get to the shading part of the drawing, negative space keeps being significant.
The negative space is often part of the background, and its value can either bring the subject forward or push it further back into space. Ask yourself: What’s the value of the negative space, what’s it’s contour, and does it have a gradation?
Process Application 3: Finishing
It’s useful to revisit the negative spaces throughout and towards the end of your drawing process. Little tweaks in the shape, value, and contour of the negative space can help get your drawing to a “finished” look.
Closing Thoughts
That’s it!
Make sure to apply negative space in your next drawing, and you’ll realize how powerful it is.
If you are new to this site and liked this article, then I recommend checking out my drawing fundamentals and drawing practice articles.
Those two in-depth guides cover the how to learn drawing philosophy of this site.
Until next time!
Felix
