NEGATIVE SPACE DRAWING EXERCISE

Negative spaces are the areas around positive forms. It is often easier to see negative shapes (once you have become aware of their existence) than positive shapes.

Once you draw the negative space around an object, you get the object for free!

The easiest way to obtain negative spaces around an object is to make a frame around it. This can be done by drawing a frame, or creating one with strips of paper.

Cardboard frames can also be made and clipped onto the drawing where you can choose a composition that takes your fancy.

Negative space drawings are one of the most powerful ways to shift from L-mode to R-mode in the brain. Drawing then becomes so much easier.

Eventually, you get used to “seeing” like an artist does, and this equates directly with a boost to your powers of strategic as well as creative thinking.

When children get used to drawing negative shapes, they acquire the skill of seeing what is visible, and what is ‘invisible’! This makes them wonderfully holistic brain processors!

Have a Go!

[Excerpted from the 'Goldenminds' edition of The Ingenius Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

What Dilip Mukerjea has introduced is actually a very powerful concept in understanding the world, especially the “empty” spaces of business problems: ambiguity, uncertainty & paradox.

Just imagine, seeing "something" out of seemingly "nothing". Wow! I like that, because I am thinking more from the latent power of discernment & acuity.

To the Japanese, this is the ideology of "nothingness", with apparent influences from Zen teachings. In practice, to the empty space between the chair and the table, the Japanese don't say, the space is empty, but full of nothing.

For me, business strategist Richard Tanner Pascale, also author of the now classic, 'The Art of Japanese Management' (1986), describes it most beautifully:

"Ambiguity may be thought of as a shroud of the unknown surrounding certain events. The Japanese have a word for it, 'ma', for which there is no English translation. The word is valuable because it gives an explicit place to the unknowable aspect of things.

ln English we may refer to an empty space between the chair and the table; the Japanese don’t say the space is empty but ‘full of nothing.’

However amusing the illustration, it goes to the core of the issue. Westerners speak of what is unknown primarily in reference to what is known (like the space between the chair and the table), while most Eastern languages give honor to the unknown in its own right.”

Nonetheless, world-renowned art teacher Betty Edwards has also systematised the understanding into the world's most widely used drawing-instruction guide, 'Drawing on the Right side of the Brain'.

She has brilliantly incorporated it into her five basic skills of drawing for perceptual problem solving.

No wonder, the Los Angeles Times has once described the book as "not only a book about drawing, it is a book about living".

Incidentally, Dilip Mukerjea has been certified by Betty Edwards to run the 5-day 'Perceptual Skills in Drawing' in Singapore. Readers can reach him for more information via email: dilip@pacific.net.sg