The Project
This was an assignment I completed for an introductory graphic design course. The guidelines was to create a composition with figure/ground ambiguity, which meant that both the negative and positive spaces were activated. This ultimately creates an image where the viewer sees the positive and negative areas as equal and can determine their own subject of the piece.
The Process
I created this entire composition using Adobe Photoshop.
I wanted to work purely in black and white so that the silhouettes were as visible as possible, and not disrupted by any hue or saturation contrast.
I mostly utilized my own digital pen, along with the brush tool, to draw these shapes. Then, I would use a combination of the brush and eraser tools to fine tune the lines and achieve the shapes that I desired.
Version where the bird silhouette is the focus
Version where the fish silhouettes are the focus
The Purpose
For this assignment, I want to engage both the positive and negative spaces, and also create shapes within those spaces that held natural contrast.
My inspiration was a coy pond;, where you look down and you can see the fish swimming in the water, and within the water, you can see the reflection of the sky above. I felt as though this contrast between the water and the sky was exactly what I was going for.
So, I used the same idea of coy fish swimming around, and within their shape, instead of the sky being reflected, it was a bird, which I used to represent the sky.
Also, some of the shapes I created had double uses. For instance, the fins of the fish were also used to create the feathers of the bird. This was another instance of the contrast between the water and the sky coming together to create this composition.
