How to Draw from Negative Space
Drawing from negative space is a trick to draw more realistically, and it can help with any art medium or style. It's not that hard once you get the idea, but once negative space understood it'll make drawing anything easier. Like using zero in mathematics, all sorts of things become possible when you draw what isn't there!
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Things You'll Need
- Col-Erase erasable colored pencils
- Drawing paper or sketchbook
- Tracing paper
- Kneaded eraser
- White vinyl eraser or stick eraser
- Workable matte fixative
Instructions
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Drawing from the Negative Space means drawing the background first. It also means leaving out areas in your drawing or painting and implying what they are by what's near them. You can paint fog by painting something fading off into the background very fast, and the unpainted negative space looks like thick fog.
It's a fancy art concept that also helps composition. If the spaces around what you draw have an interesting shape and balance well, then the final drawing will look better. So let's start by imagining a silhouette of something that would be easy to recognize just by its shape -- like a leaf or some autumn leaves.
I am using Col-Erase colored pencils so that I can use several colors in this composition, but you can also do monochrome in graphite and get a good idea.
Sketch a leaf shape with your soft B or HB pencil or Col-Erase color on tracing paper. (If you only have an HB pencil, go lightly when this demonstration calls for a hard pencil and use a very sharp point.) I used Terra Cotta Col-erase because I want the space around my maple leaf shape to be Terra Cotta colored, and to see how that color would look on the paper. Any medium or dark autumn color would do.
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Turn your drawing on the tracing paper upside down and move it around on the paper till you place it where you want it. Be sure it's at least half an inch from any edge. Leave some room for other designs, since we may do some overlapping designs in this demonstration.
Draw over the lines from behind with a stylus, a sharp pencil or a ball point pen (the pen doesn't need to be a working one). Your design will transfer in reverse onto the paper, a light outline in the color you used.
Shade around the leaf shape carefully, going darkest right at the edge of the outline (to cover it) and lighter the farther you get from the leaf shape. Go entirely around the leaf shape. You've just drawn a leaf from the negative space! By drawing around it, the leaf is obviously there -- even though that is not a drawing of a leaf, but a bit of leaf-shaped blank paper we skipped.
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Around the leaf on the page is a larger area of negative space. It doesn't look balanced because there's too much under the leaf. This is composition, and there are some rules for composition. The Rule of Three states that if you divide the area of your art into three sections with two lines, in both directions, turning it into a nine-patch rectangular grid, the places the lines cross are the best focal points.
My first leaf placement falls in one of those crossings and that's fine, but the big area below it looks empty. Intuitively, I think it needs a larger leaf shape, maybe an oak leaf. Sketch a larger oak leaf shape on tracing paper as in Step One, using another dark autumn color like Tuscan Red or Brown. I'm using Tuscan Red because oak leaves often turn red, and I like Tuscan Red.
Trace and transfer it as you did in Step Two before shading.
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Shade the oak leaf silhouette as you did the maple leaf silhouette, continuing with the same dark autumn color you used for the outline. If your set only has 12 colors, red, orange and brown would work fine for this project.
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I used digital coloring to show the three areas of negative space that exist now in this drawing. Light blue fills the negative space outside the leaf shapes, while yellow and red fill the leaf shapes themselves. Negative space is anything outside your image. The shape of negative space isn't consciously noticeable to many art viewers -- but this false-color rendering shows that each of these areas has a shape of its own and affects how the subjects adjacent to it look.
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Sketch a smaller, simpler leaf shape in gold or brown on your tracing paper, then move it around in the remaining area of negative space till it forms a pleasing zig-zag pattern with the other two. Transfer and shade it as you did the rest.
If you are doing this on a larger page, feel free to add more leaf shapes until you're happy with how the page looks. Overlap some of them, that can look interesting too. Where the areas of shading overlap, let them, the combination of soft colors can look appealing.
Sign with your initials or signature within one of the shaded areas and outside a leaf, using the color of that leaf's negative space sketching. You can even decide to fill in all of the outside area of negative space with softly shaded areas of those three autumn colors for a nice effect.
Try variations of this design idea with seashell shapes or summer leaves or anything that would look cool to you done in related colors. Draw silhouettes in negative space while doodling in ballpoint or pencil, the best practice is constant doodling while waiting on hold or for appointments. How you shade is less important than getting used to the idea of filling in the space around things to give them a clean outline, because when you draw something realistic, having the background done first gives you a very accurate outline for drawing the subject itself.
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Tips & Warnings
If your shading gets too dark in any area, just press and lift with the kneaded eraser to lighten it. Erase completely if dark colors get into the silhouetted leaf shapes with the white vinyl eraser.
Another variation on this that makes a great outdoor crafts project is to take sketch paper outside, collect real leaves, lay them out one by one on the paper and spray them with spray paint. Be sure to let a leaf silhouette dry before laying the next leaf on the design, so they don't smear.
Cutting paper templates for shapes and spraying by filling an aerosol mister with liquid non-toxic watercolor is another way to do these designs that's easier and safer indoors, especially with children. To make liquid watercolor, just use small misters and swirl a brush into a child's watercolor pan, then rinse repeatedly in the mister before putting the top on till the water turns a good strong color. Remember it will be lighter when it dries, so add more paint than you think you'll need.
Using pink or red or green school erasers or the pink erasers on the ends of Col-Erase pencils may streak your art with an ugly pink. I never use those for anything if I can help it, because they stain. You may want to cut them off to remind yourself of that.
Don't use spray workable matte fixative or any spray paint in enclosed areas with poor ventilation or near open flame, electric stove burners that are on or lit cigarettes.
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