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Outline and Interior

How do outlines and interior marks take turns directing your attention?

20 works · 4 chapters · AI curator · Owned subset

Chapter 1 of 4 · 4 works

Faces Against Flat Grounds

Four heads sit against unbroken, single-color fields. The outline alone separates figure from ground, and interior marks already push toward it.

Rawblocks #26 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #26

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

A translucent, layered head floats on an unbroken red field; overlapping color patches and mismatched yellow-pupiled eyes press against a soft outer edge.

Rawblocks #32 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #32

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

A heavy black outline holds a head crammed with multicolored scrawl against a clean blue ground; both eye sockets are filled with red-orange marks, and a red drop hangs from the chin.

Rawblocks #44 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #44

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

On a saturated magenta field, loose gestural black marks trace a face with open, sparse lines—the ground itself does the pressing, leaving the marks little room to breathe.

Both heads float on flat single-color grounds, but where the first outline is soft and translucent, this one is a thick black wall barely containing the wiring inside.

The clean blue ground gives way to an all-over magenta that eliminates any sense of distance, pushing the face forward with nowhere to recede.

Rawblocks #43 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #43

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

A head emerges from a hot orange field as flat black fragments and wire-like outlines; a teal X in the eye area reads as something refused or sealed off.

The magenta field is replaced by a warm orange, but the same flatness persists—here the face fragments rather than consolidates, its eye crossed out rather than staring.

Chapter 2 of 4 · 5 works

Marks That Multiply

Works where interior marks layer so densely that the accumulation itself becomes a second boundary—a structure built from repeated scribble rather than a single drawn line.

Rawblocks #46 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #46

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Yellow loops, teal tangles, and a jaw broken open by sharp white teeth build a head that vibrates against its still purple ground.

Moving from a fragmented orange face to a purple ground, the marks here multiply into a dense crown that feels like a shout caught mid-release.

Rawblocks #56 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #56

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Dense interior hatching makes this animal-like head feel caged inside its own lines; teal peeks through gaps in the black scaffolding.

Rawblocks #5 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #5

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Jagged white teeth appear everywhere—around eyes, across the brow, lining the mouth—so the whole head reads as a structure built from biting.

Both works pile marks until the face feels trapped inside them, but where the previous erupts upward, this one turns inward, its whisker-lines pressing against the frame.

The animal silhouette gives way to a more frontal face, but the tooth motif spreads from mouth to every border, turning the whole surface into a biting edge.

Rawblocks #53 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #53

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

The face splits almost down its center—yellow and blue marks flood the left, red and teal claim the right—holding two distinct mark-fields in one skull.

Rawblocks #54 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #54

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Thick black scrawl surrounds a face whose two large eye sockets, each ringed with jagged crown-like spikes, stare out from an asymmetric, heavily worked skull.

Where the previous work repeats one motif across the whole face, this head divides itself, its dense marks segregated into two competing halves.

The split face is replaced by one that feels compressed from all sides, its scrawl so dense the head seems to be shrinking under its own marks.

Chapter 3 of 4 · 6 works

Frames Within Faces

Works where a geometric element—rectangle, grid, nested box, or band—appears inside or around the face, adding a second, harder layer of enclosure to the drawn outline.

Rawblocks #59 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #59

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

A skull sits frontal on saturated blue; eye circles contain layered spirals and grids, and a dark grid of thin lines crosses the upper background.

The compressed, scrawled face opens onto a bright blue field, but the skull's eye sockets now contain their own internal grids—enclosure folded inside enclosure.

Rawblocks #50 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #50

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

A rectangular barred socket at the face's center suggests something sealed behind the surface; gold teeth flash against a dark mouth cavity like ornament and lock at once.

Rawblocks #40 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #40

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Yellow banding runs across chin, cheeks, and forehead, striping the face like a crate; two eyes carry different internal marks—zigzag versus cross—lending asymmetric unease.

Where the previous work's grids sit inside the eyes, here a single barred rectangle dominates the face's center, reading unmistakably as a window with bars.

The barred socket gives way to horizontal banding that wraps the whole face, turning the head into a striped, boxed form.

Rawblocks #4 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #4

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Teal bars stack along one edge while vertical stripes press the other; crossed-out eyes and a red triangle crown give the boxed-in head a confrontational charge.

Rawblocks #1 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #1

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Concentric nested rectangles pull the eye toward a tight spiral at the center; sawtooth lines slice across the surface, with barely any negative space surviving—no face, only frame.

Both works use banding to press the face inward, but here the bands migrate to the margins, squeezing the head from outside rather than marking it from within.

The banded face gives way to a composition where the frame is the entire subject—nested rectangles with no face at all, containment stripped to its purest geometry.

Rawblocks #2 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #2

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Angular overlapping outlines lean and collide across the surface; a red-and-white spiral anchors the upper center while a zigzag band cuts the lower third, resisting any single focal point.

The concentric inward pull of the previous work is answered here by angular outlines that lean and collide, replacing centered compression with a restless, multi-directional push.

Chapter 4 of 4 · 5 works

Skulls With Added Weight

Skull forms carrying chains, visors, medallions, or a white ring. Each addition sits visibly on the form, making the boundary a physical object rather than a drawn edge.

Rawblocks #25 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #25

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Red dashes burst outward behind the skull like a broadcast signal; teeth ring the eye sockets as well as the jaw, multiplying mouths across the whole face.

Moving from abstract boxes back to a face, this skull radiates outward—the first work in the exhibition where the boundary seems to be pushing energy away rather than holding it in.

Rawblocks #24 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #24

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

A chain and medallion pull the skull rightward; radiating color bands fan behind it, making the form feel ornamental and hollow at once.

Rawblocks #48 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #48

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

Rectangular goggle-like eye shapes give the skull a mask quality; cyan and yellow patches leak through black scaffolding, giving the form an unstable, lit-from-within appearance.

Where the previous skull broadcasts outward through red dashes, this one is weighted down by a chain, its outward radiation replaced by decorative gravity.

The chain of the previous work adds external weight; here the skull's own eye sockets become rigid rectangular frames, containment built into the anatomy itself.

Rawblocks #16 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #16

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

An oversized pink visor turns eyewear into a grinning mouth-border; a small dripping form at the jaw suggests something leaking out of an otherwise sealed figure.

Rawblocks #31 by nnxyz

Rawblocks #31

nnxyz

View & watch drawing

A heavy white ring frames a face staring through mismatched eyes—one ringed in yellow-green spikes, the other a tight spiral; all pattern density is concentrated inside the circle, the surrounding field left sparse.

Where the previous skull's rectangular eyes are hollow and stiff, this visor is pink and tooth-rimmed, transforming a protective object into a boundary that grins back.

The visor of the previous work is a partial frame; here a complete white ring encloses the entire face, making the boundary a deliberate, visible object and closing the exhibition's central question in plain sight.

One more look

Compare a facial outline with a geometric division elsewhere in the gallery. What does each boundary make easier to distinguish, and what crosses it?