POS/NEG Bird

Please make an entry for the Journal/Reflection on the POS/NEG Bird assignment that we did in class. Discuss the purpose of this assignment, the main concepts, (types of line, shape, value, patters....) that were related to you during the class exercise. Discuss how you demonstraited the use of Pattern, Value(dark and light), and line quality. It really works best if you write your reflection first in a word processor and then cut and paste it into the journal entry space.

For this assignment we were to draw the image of a bird and (what seemed to be) a moon, but we were not to draw the bird OR the moon. It really was confusing at first, but we were told, rather, to draw the images we saw in the negative—for example, a shark’s fin on the bottom and a breast on the right side. This taught us how to look at images with a different perspective. 

We were then to fill in the negative with whatever we chose. I was stumped at first… but the image of a bird made me think of music, so I began to fill in the negative with various musical notes. Soon after, the idea just popped into my head—“I know why the caged bird sings.” So, in front of the musical notes, but behind the moon and bird, I started to draw bars, as if caging the notes behind the bars. I then placed birds into the negative, which I left unshaded at first, but decided to shade them, putting their captivity in contrast with the freedom of the positive bird. Through the metamorphosis of the drawing, the positive bird is able to take on additional meaning, aside from the positive/negative contrast we were to draw.

I would also like to note that I chose to emphasize the images placed in the negative, so I gave their lines (and the shading) much more value than those in the positive, so that it would emphasize the emotion of being trapped in the shadows of the cage, opposed to the freedom of the positive bird.

(The orientation is wrong, even though the image is saved AND uploaded in the horizontal orientation, for some reason, blogger uploads it as vertical and there is no option to rotate it. Not sure if any one else has this problem?)