At the beginning of this project, we were asked to brainstorm some words the describe ourselves and then choose three main ones to focus on. The three words I chose were creative, Integrity (integrous), and loving. While these are not the only words I would use to describe myself, they are some of the more powerful words. We then had to turn these words into images in our heads and then into a sketch. For this, I drew a lot of inspiration from my name, which means doe (a female deer) in Hebrew. Does stay with their young for about 200 day, which is around 28 ½ weeks. While this may seem short to us, this is a lot longer than most in the animal kingdom. This animal fulfilled my hopes for the word loving.

For the word integrous, I chose to add a wing to my deer. Integrity is about having a strong moral backbone to be able to rise above selfishness and immaturity. Birds, despite having thin, hollow bones, are able to catch wind currents and fly above our capitalist and fraught society and see the beautiful whole. While I am not free of these strains, I do feel that integrity is one of my core values and the wing carries my hopes for truth and justice forward.

As for the word creativity, drawing and writing are my strongest passions and those both start with a pencil. WIth a pencil you can create worlds and character, images and music. A whole new dimension opens when one picks up a pencil. When one can tap into this dimension for a time, I feel they are truly creative.

However, the main images and their positive space (main focus) are one of two aspects of my piece. The negative space around them plays a key part in bring the image to life. In my stamp, negative space was used in three ways: as a background, as an outline, and as an accent. The first is the most obvious as it is found behind the image. The yellow deer has a black background, which is the absence of focus in the image. This then makes the main image pop. As for the outline aspect, negative space turned my pencil sketch lines into shapes. It helped to show the individual feathers of the wing, and differentiate between the deer and the vine circle encompassing her. Finally the accent aspect. This is mostly found in the deer’s face and the veins in the leaves. Negative space allowed me to add in the detail of the eye, nose, jaw bone and eyebrow. Without this lack of positive space, these details would have been lost, causing the deer to looks more like a blobby silhouette then an actual creature.

The last thing I want to touch on is the process of seeing negative and positive space. I didn’t really need to learn to understand it, as seeing it has just been an innate thing I do.  But anyway, when it comes to seeing and then using negative and positive space there is, while not a process, a flip. Yes, negative space is used to make the positive pop, but at times there is a flip when negative space becomes a main focus, and therefore becomes positive space. Looking at the eye, to reference the deer's face again, we know there is something there. That is not an empty socket. Yet, I used negative space to show the eyelid and lashes and it works. You know there is an eye there. This flip is my process, and it allows me to give both positive and negative space other definitions and uses.

So the purpose of this assignment was to create a stamp that represents you. So the way to start the process was to think of ten words that describes me and pick three of those words (My three words being intelligent, simplistic, and distinguish). So after the three words are chosen, I started sketching some ideas for stamps (glasses, an owl, and a peace sign). After that, I decided to do the glasses. So the hardest part for me was to make sure I was able to get the image in my mind out without using so much detail. For example, I used many small lines to create a cracked glass, but they were too small to really cut out. So what I had to do was get rid of the cracked glass idea and drew it in a way so it looked like a piece of the glass is missing. I wouldn’t have never payed attention to that if it wasn’t for negative and positive spacing. Negative and positive spacing helps define a subject and bring balance to the composition. So I had to think if the cracks will do or not. After a while, I decided that it will not and it will be disturbing to the eyes. So to understand negative and positive spacing, I had to read A LOT about it. What really confused me was which was positive spacing and which was negative spacing, so I had to ask others about it and read a bit more. After I got some practice with it, I realized that it depends on how you see it and what the subject is. What I learned from negative and positive spacing was negative and positive spacing helps you figure out if the image has a balanced composition. This stamp is supposed to represent three traits that people described me with, which are intelligent, simplistic, and distinguish. The way my rubber stamp represent my intelligence is by being glasses, since most nerd stereotype is a person wearing glasses. The way my rubber stamp represent simplistic is by the shape of the glasses, since many glasses comes in different shapes and forms and rectangular glasses seems to be the simplistic design of glasses. The way my rubber stamp represent me being distinguished is by half of the glasses being in good shape and the other half in bad condition, since you mostly see either glasses in bad conditions and glasses in good conditions. So I think seeing half of the glasses (or anything in general) is in good condition while the other half hasn't been something different from what it’s usually seen.

The three words I chose to describe me are rowing, scouts and busy. This symbolizes me because those two activities take up a majority of my life. That also describes why I used the word busy, because like I said they take up all of my life. I used the oar to stand for rowing, the hand which shows the scout salute, for scouting, and the square on the wrist is a watch showing that I have no time. (0:00 is meant to be engraved on the watch)

You can use negative and positive space to give your art more dimension and contrast. You can also use to show what you want to be the main focal point. In my piece the positive space is the outline and the details of my piece. What originally confused me about negative and positive space was what I needed to cut out. Sometimes it was hard to determine which was which, so therefore it confused me when cutting things out. I learned that negative and positive space is used to enhance art in many ways.