Holy Workplace Crunch, Batman! Hopefully, you guys have been reading ahead while various things have slowed this workshop to a crawl. Let's see if we can't pick up and sustain the pace again. Our assignment this week is to draw a moderately complex piece of household furniture using recognition of "negative spaces." Rather than trying to draw the solid forms of your subject alone, take note of the shape and size of the "empty" spaces between spokes and arms and legs and surfaces. Assignment: Armchair, Task chair, Chaise Find yourself a chair of medium dimensions, but with arms. Not heavy, cloth-wrapped and stuffed arms, but slender arms that might be ornate for a wood chair or the arms of an office/task chair. Orient the chair such that it is at an angle to you - that the back of the chair is not parallel to your chest. This will give you more interesting negative spaces, especially if the chair has spokes for its back. Feel free to move the chair around to get a better composition. You want to draw something interesting, after all. Moving it closer or further away might help, too. Take your time. As you look over the dimensions of your chair, pay particular attention to the shape, size and contours of the spaces underneath or in-between parts of the chair. Draw these spaces. When you're done, you should find a pretty good rendition of the chair. As with most of our techniques, the objective is to distract you from your "verbal" or "left-brain" processing of what the object looks like cognitively and focus on the "right-brain" intangibles of abstract line characteristics. Enjoy!