Basic Drawing- Gesture/Reductive/Negative Space

Basic Drawing Exercises- Gesture, Reductive, and Negative Space

Today we did a series of portfolio exercises designed to encourage students to think about the subjects being drawn in different ways. All are useful concepts that can be used to improve one's drawings in general and should always be considered while drawing.

The assignments-

Gesture and Reductive- The first thing we did today was an exercise in gestural and reductive drawing. A large potted plant (or a collection of branches) was set up in the middle of the room and students were asked to make a series of line drawings of it, using a progressively smaller number of lines. In doing so, students were required to consider which lines were the most important in describing the plant. To make this up use your pencil to divide your sheet of 18"x 24" paper into 8 equal size boxes. Then find a large plant with long stalks (or collect several long branches from trees or shrubs in a container that holds them upright) to draw from. Using pencil, draw the plant in each box using the following number of lines: 24, 20, 16, 12, 8, 4, 2, 1. Below is a student example from a previous semester.

Since the number of lines you may use for each will be limited, for each drawing show only the most essential lines needed to understand the nature of the plant. Note in each box the number of lines used.

Negative Space- Last week we drew contour lines surrounding shoes, creating positive shapes. In art, the space not contained in a positive shape is called negative space. Since everything in a drawing is either positive or negative, both are equally important in the drawing.

I brought in my old studio chair, and set it up on the center table, and had students draw the all the empty spaces in the chair, anything surrounded by wood. By drawing all the negative spaces and locating them in the proper relative space, the original object is revealed, as in the example below.

To make this up, if you have a chair with a lot of spaces within, you can do the same thing. If not, a complex section of bare branches of a tree or shrub works very well. Draw it large so it fills a whole sheet of your 18" x 24" paper.

Positive and Negative Shapes- The last exercise brought together positive and negative. I set up a several bottles on the central table, and had the students do a line drawing of them. They drew the positive shapes of the bottles, but were encouraged to use the negative shapes between them to help find the exact contours of the bottles, and the relative spacing and position of each. An example is shown below.

You can make this up by setting up a group of six large bottles and drawing them on your 18"x 24" paper.

Homework- Set up a group of 4 similar sized bottles. (all large wine bottles, all mediums sized soda/water bottles, all small perfume bottles, etc) You will do 4 drawings of the set up, one per page in your small sketchbook. The bottles should remain in the same relative positions to each other, but each drawing should have a different viewpoint. So either have the bottles on something that can be rotated, or move yourself around the set up to a different spot for each sketch.