This is the ninth in a new series of bi-monthly articles about sketching on location. The articles are based on my Sketching on Location Manual. The manual was developed as a series of lessons that I use on my guided sketching tours of Europe and as material in my regular drawing classes. As such the lessons can be part of a regular course or used by individual students as a practical learning guide. In the last chapter we worked on "The Quick Sketch." If you have not seen the previous lessons starting in the June 2000 issue of Animation World Magazine, it is recommended that you do. The lessons are progressive and expand on basic ideas. It is suggested that you start from the beginning for a better understanding of my approach. If you really want to start at the beginning open with the lessons based on the Vilppu Drawing Manual.

Moving On...
In the last lesson we discussed the quick sketch. The main purpose was capturing the moment of both individual figures and groups of figures focusing on a logical step by step approach of first capturing a gesture and then describing the volume and shape of the subject.

Our ability to recognize someone from a block away (when all we can actually see is the silhouette) is an example of the power of shape in communication. Positive and negative shapes are just complimentary parts of a silhouette. We call the space around something "negative space," but in terms of drawing on a flat surface, nothing is really negative. In the drawing above, the fence was drawn by the tones behind it. Learning to see a simple contour is a fundamental element of drawing. Chapter one and two essentially were directed at learning to see the contour of forms. The ability to see three-dimensional shapes two dimensionally is done by not only looking at the shape of the object's contour, but also by seeing the space around it as form. The emptiness between things many times is as important as the things themselves.

All drawings in this article are by and © Glenn Vilppu.

The watercolor sketch on the above left was painted directly with minimal preliminary drawing, and totally with both positive and negative shapes in mind.

On the right, in the watercolor of the boys on the rock, the wave behind the boys is an example of both a positive and negative shape. I used the white of the paper to silhouette the boys and then used the dark of the water behind it to draw its contours.

With practice you can develop facility in using the negative and positive shapes in your drawings; however, first, you need to spend time analyzing the shapes themselves.