A Drawing a Day: Negative Space

I remember a conversation I once had with an old friend from high school that revealed a sad truth about adult life, particularly at work. That even though you may love what you do, sometimes the negative people around you make it miserable.

I’ve experienced this many times in the countless jobs I’ve gone through since college. It is extremely frustrating and most of the time I realized that the work, though I loved it, wasn’t enough to make me subject myself to such negativity every day.

In today’s drawing I decided to try something different using a technique that focuses on drawing the negative space. This means that instead of drawing the actual object, you outline the shapes of the background which in turn define the positive figure.

Drawing this way made me realize something very wise – that the negative is necessary to bring out the positive. The realization suddenly lifted the heaviness I felt about some negative people in my sphere of work, recognizing that even they have an essential role to play, though crappy as it may seem. I realize that I don’t need get dragged down with them, but instead react in opposition to their negative energy by focusing on making things better and challenging myself to look past all the bad stuff.

And in true childhood wisdom, I’d like to say this to all the negative people of the world:

I’m rubber, and you’re glue. Anything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!