FIGURE-GROUND RELATIONSHIP

First of all figure is the part of a composition that we pay attention which we call positive shape. In design recognizable objects (subject matter) are easy to see as figure. Ground is everything that is not figure, ground is sometimes consider as background but this is not always true (i.e picture), because sometimes there is nothing behind figure (shapes are side by side). When ground surround figure it create negative space
Figure-ground refers to the relationship between an object and its surround. Sometimes the relationship is stable, meaning that it is easy to pick out the figure from the ground.



Sometimes the relationship between figure and ground is unstable, which happens to having hard time to separate figure from ground