July 2025

The concept of figure and ground is not necessarily a difficult concept to grasp; however, learning to use it to effectively impact one's audience can be a challenge. By mastering the use of positive and negative space, a composition can allow for its audience to see various images upon first glance. While this can be used to create what could be called illusions, figure and ground can be seen in all kinds of work. Using this concept, I knew I wanted to create something that created an unsettling feeling. As horror fans would understand, sometimes the scariest thing can be a gnarly, insidious looking hand creeping around the corner of a wall or onto a bed. Keeping this in mind, I worked to show this audience how the concept of figure/ground can be used to bring this nightmare to life.

Beginning the process of this assignment was extremely difficult as it called less for the use of lines and more for the use of shapes. For my ideation sketches, I played around with creating shapes with my negative and positive space that fit snugly together in order to create two sets of images. I attempted to do this for all of my sketches, so I would have plenty to choose from for my prototype. Many of my sketches used curvilinear shapes to give more of a biomorphic feel. I knew I wanted to work traditionally, so I used cardstock and pencil to first map out my shapes. I then used black Sharpie to finalize my design once I was comfortable with the placement of everything. By using the dark Sharpie, the composition had high contrast in order to best emphasize the element of figure/ground in the piece.

After showing my classmates my ideation sketches, they liked the designs I had come up with, but there was a clear favorite among them. The one with the hand reaching down with the hair bleeding into it proved to be an effective design. Classmate 1 said that it was a clean design which I agreed with. It would be simple enough to translate into a bigger piece. Classmate 2 also said that it would provide a lot of contrast which would highlight the figure/ground aspect well. After deciding to develop that sketch, I created my prototype and got extremely helpful feedback. Classmate 3 mentioned the shape language, with the hand being more triangular, helped to get the mood across. He suggested I make the tip of the fingernail that crosses over into the face black to contrast with the white of the face. Classmate 4 also gave a helpful tip to elongate the thumb to make it more anatomically correct as well as to bring the head higher. Lastly, Classmate 5 and Professor were especially helpful because they told me that I could use white for detail on the face by making part of it in black. I took all of the previously mentioned advice except I did not end up bringing the head higher on the final composition. I feel as though bringing more black onto the face helped with the horror I was going for. Additionally, keeping the hand in white but switching that tip of the fingernail to black added to the fright aspect because it shows that feeling of just barely being scraped by something and being scared it is not just your imagination. While my ideation sketch looked more like the hair was being grabbed, the final ended up looking more like the "monster" was just about to touch the person. I really think the sharpness of the hand's features worked to contribute to the mood. If I could do something differently, I would practice more with light sources and how to draw the shapes for the shadows on the face. They did not turn out terribly, but I would have liked to implement Professor Behr's and Madabuchi's advice with more skill.