How much 'negative' space is too much?

Joan Breckwoldt · 12-07-2005, 05:20 PM

Hi Allan,

Thank you for your post, sorry it's taken me two day to thank you, no internet for a day and then other stuff going on around here.

I like the way you have cropped the image, this in fact was one of the three ways that I came up with. I am intrigued lately with square paintings, I'm not sure why. So it was either a 12x16" rectangular, or possibly 16x20", but the bigger canvas always seems like it has too much negative space. That's probably just my taste and level of inexperience talking at the moment. It's all in what one's eye gets used to and I will probably think completely differently in 6 months about that negative space. Like Michele mentioning that she like more negative space around her subjects lately. Or . .. I was thinking a square composition.

Thank you again, I think it's interesting to see what someone else would do with the same image!

Joan