Negative Space
See also:   [Art Terms]
                   [Space]
                   [Formal Elements]
                   [2-D design]
                   [3-D design]
                  
Negative Space

For some reason those outside of art try to use the 
phrase "negative space" in the same "downward-glance"
way that people use "negative numbers" to mean
things like "un-employment figures". However, this
is of course simply wrong.

Negative space (a relatively new concept art-wise) is
simply what isn't there. 

If the tree is the thing that is there, then the space
between its branches and leaves - ie, probably the 
B/G (back/ground) is the sky behind the tree. Thus,
to see the shape of the space (in the sky) cut out 
by the tree is to look at to look at the negative 
space.

Usually credit is given to Cezane for "discovering"
this - the way that light played about an object
outside of course was a primary concern for all 
artists at that time in the "Impressionists". You
can see it as you look at their works in the late
1880's and you can almost trace it to particular
times for each artist when this "dark and heavy"
kind of painting gave way to LIGHT. Both in the
sense, of less paint and in a lot lighter pallet
and less darkly treating shadows and such.

One of the simplest things to do is to trace your
hand on a piece of paper. 

And now if we draw some background lines behind it,
we see this sort of "poking thru" of the negative
space - the lines accentuating it, and of course
then in themselves becoming a new *actual* space
and then a new negative space between them, etc.



Now it's important to notice that in this case,
i've drawn the B/G lines after drawing the hand
(traced actually - does that matter? ;).

But, with paint or opaque inks (eg, gouache, etc)
i could draw the back ground lines, then draw the
hand in, and then re-trace (bring back out) the
side-to-side B/G lines.

Each of these effects are having different ways
that the negative space expresses itself.

Of course, many optical illusions depend on our
eyes and how it addresses negative space. This
is also refered to as in-attention (or 
other-directed attention) to detail. 

An importnat point is that we also see those
lines which we are used to seeing. It has been
recently that people who live most of their 
lives in the plains (eg, deserts, mesas) see
the objects differently and the top hat illusion
for them simply doesn't exist. They see it as
equal in height and width.