The space between

There is a hidden force in most forms of creative expression. Like Dark Matter, it surrounds everything, yet remains unseen. Claude Debussy defined this when he said, “music is the space between notes.” In design, we call it negative space, the anti-shapes to the dominant shapes.

In architecture, cinematography, set design, graphic design and painting, our attention is drawn to the central elements of any creative effort, the positive shapes. But these critical elements require equally powerful support from the anti-shapes. And while we tend not to notice masterfully managed negative spaces, we sure notice it when they aren’t.

The pregnant pause, an area of rest, sky holes, the background, that empty spot in your living room all require the same high level of curation as the prominent bits. We train this very thing in the notan painting method, where a scene is reduced to just black (everything in shadow) and white (everything in light) shapes. If you can make a dynamic composition with the interaction of only black and white shapes, you have a fair chance of making a dynamic finished piece.

While I have been acutely aware of this idea since the early days of my career in graphic design, it wasn’t until I saw the Grand Canyon that I really experienced the importance of this idea in painting.  While nature has a seemingly effortless way of developing interesting positive/negative shapes in canyon walls and their shadows, maintaining those dynamic shapes while painting from life is quite the challenge. They move, they change, they grow or shrink as the sun arcs across the sky. It takes a few years to realize that we can’t duplicate nature, we interpret it.

The secret ingredient in designing compelling shapes and anti-shapes, no matter the branch of visual arts, is utilizing the second principle of creative expression, variation.

Even in a simple black and white design there are still many ways to apply variation in both positive and negative shapes: size, value, edge, identity (the nature of a shape’s perimeter) and the space between. To see this idea in action let’s look at the king of positive and negative shapes and winner of the International PosNeg Shapes Award 27 years in a row, Andrew Wyeth.

I’ve often marveled at how even his simple unfinished sketches that just float in a page can be so darn good. It pointed out how important the placement of the sketch within the frame was. By varying the distance between sketch and the edges of the painting surface, the drawing felt more intentional, emotional. Looking at any of his paintings of the local architecture we become acutely aware of the shapes that surround the focal structures, with the edge of the matte or canvas, what I call the fourth wall, completing the shape.

We see this in the work of Gustave Klimt, Richard Diebenkorn, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe and pretty much anyone who ever came out of the Russian school. Every shape and space plays a critical role in the overall design, whether we notice them or not.

There are a couple of things we can do to maintain variation throughout the painting process.

Don’t repeat, resonate.

Identical things in any space draw attention to themselves and not in a good way. Make every effort to create variety in like things: fence posts, trees, clouds, waves and stuff on a table. Change size, value, edges, color, and/or the distance from one to the next.

Vary the space between.

Optically measure the distance between the elements and between the elements and the edge of the painting surface. Make sure these measures are all different. Take a caliper to any Richard Diebenkorn painting to compare the negative spaces and you’ll see what I’m talking about

Unequal distribution.

Strive to create an unequal distribution between positive and negative aspects of every element: Hard and soft; land and sky; clouds and sky; trees and other trees and non-trees; organic and geometric; light and dark; large and small; pattern and rest; action and quiet; chroma and neutral; figure and ground; table and tea cup; as well as shape and anti-shape. In other words, make the ratios unequal; for example, 80% shapes and patterns and 20% rest.

In the movie The Fablemans, the central character, a young Steven Spielberg, has a brief chance encounter with a John Ford-ish director-type character. The grumpy senior director points to three landscape paintings in his office and says, (I’m paraphrasing), “A high horizon is interesting, a low horizon is interesting, a mid-horizon is boring… now get out.” He was, of course, referring to unequal distribution.

Brain training.

Train your intuition using simple exercises, like the Three-dot challenge (compose a space using only three circles) or six-line challenge (same idea using six marks). Work with a limited number of elements within a drawn box to see how interesting you can make them.

Study the masters.

Revisit every great painting and focus on the spaces between things and not the things themselves.