Today, I looked back at some of my henna photos from 2011, and created a set on Flickr of a select few photos as a benchmark to represent the quality of my henna work in 2011. I have a feeling that five years later (or even just a couple!), this will be a nice way to see how much I have progressed in my henna journey.

As I looked through the photos in the set, I noticed that the designs that I find particularly attractive are those that are really intricate. Drawing tiny, repetitive patterns allows me to sharpen my focus, and is a sort of meditative experience. Although doing such intricate work is a lot of fun, in the past, I have often been very disappointed in the overall look and feel of these intensely detailed designs. Every detail’s perfect, but I have felt that the design needs something more to make it truly striking. That’s when I realized that I hadn’t been utilizing negative space properly! Negative space in this context refers to the blank areas surrounding the major elements in a design. In contrast to other forms of art, natural henna artists don’t have a palette of colours to work with. In henna, striking designs are created by clever use of interesting layouts, negative space and variation of line thickness.

Now, I am going to share some of my favourite henna designs from 2011 with you – favourites because they have one or more of the three attributes that make designs striking: layout, negative space and variation of line thickness