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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Positive or Negative?

We had a phone meeting recently. At most meetings both of us usually take lots of notes and this time was no exception. Here's how Maria began hers:


Remember tripoli? That image above is one of tripoli's many possible iterations. Those soft three sided shapes play and interact with each other - forming and sharing groupings. A common interpretation is to see the triangles as "positive space" and the white outside the triangles as "negative space." (For a quick intro to "Positive and Negative Space" see this page.)

Then Maria did something she does often and effortlessly, she turned a negative, positive.


Extending that negative space between triangles turned it positive. Whenever paths wanted to cross, then in hollibaugh fashion, she drew one behind the other.

Here are Maria's complete and unaltered "notes" (I played with the first two images in Photoshop):


We had a great meeting. (It was with Arlene.)

Click images for larger views.


2 comments:

Carole Ohl said...

This is one of my favorite things to do with Tripoli, and one of the reasons it's one of my favorite tangles. I tend to see the shapes as negative and positive all at once, which can be very confusing, but somehow very appropriate! FUN!

Judi said...

Very nifty! Thanks for the new way to look at it. :-)