Hello, I’m Yu Qing :) I graduated from Hwa Chong Junior College and was from the science stream. I do not have any formal art background, but I like to draw and doodle since young, so it’s really great that ADM has a foundation drawing class to help me get my basics right. As I plan to major in animation, I feel that acquiring strong drawing skills will be very beneficial. I hope to make the very best out of this class in this semester!
For our first Foundation Drawing class, our prof introduced a style of sketching that he would like us to have a go at. It is rather charming – instead of drawing objects in isolation and being obsessed with bringing out its form, his way of sketching is a lot looser.
- Scenes are to be looked at in the overall perspective.
- The sketch is primarily concerned with the interplay of positive and negative spaces.
- There need not be any clear boundary of whatever we were drawing, we can simply allow one object flow to the next.
I feel that our prof’s demonstration drawing is very ‘fluid’, natural, and somehow visually comfortable. One table can morph into another table in the back, yet the front is represented by positive space while the latter negative.
Shortly after, we went down to Canteen 2 to do some sketching! Prof suggested we apply quick strokes when we are confident and slow down when we are not.
This was the very first sketch I made. I feel like I didn’t understand what Prof was trying to tell us. My sketch remains too clean and I was shading into spaces quite arbitrarily.
Some other sketches I’d made:
I wonder if I am thinking too much while drawing, or not thinking enough at all. As my mind is usually blank when I draw, I do not consciously decide which object to be represented with negative space and which positive. Perhaps this is why my sketches are still rather isolated and traditional.
This is a sketch that I was rather happy with. I feel that there is more fluidity between different objects, but the use of positive/negative space is still rather ambiguous.
After comparing my own sketches with my prof’s, I also notice that he varies the tone of shading a lot more – which may be why he is able to create more depth. Also his lines are way looser than mine – I will feel compelled to finish drawing the leg of a chair yet he can very freely leave it as nothing more than a line with a small suggestion of a cuboid structure.
Hope that with a lot more practices, I will be able to manoeuvre comfortably around positive and negative spaces!