Have you ever heard of Negative Painting? It’s a great painting technique I use a lot in my florals, especially when I’m painting leaves, stems, and buds. In watercolor painting, it’s a way to keep the white or lightest color while painting darker colors around it. This technique adds depth and dimension to your work, and it helps you focus on the background areas instead of the subject itself. By concentrating on the negative areas of your painting, you can create a more balanced and harmonious work. If you’ve watched some of my YouTube timelapse videos, you can see this process in action. Check out the Blue Fields painting video where I paint the background space between the trees to let in light and shape. I want the brightest colors possible, so I try not to mix too much white into the colors. The transparent underpainting, like watercolor, shows more brilliant and true rich colors. An opaque color when mixed with white can look heavy.
The purpose of Negative Painting is to let the lightest part of the painting show through. It allows a spontaneous mixture of colors to appear and be part of the painting that you can’t achieve deliberately to get that texture. It gives it that glow appearance because the white of the canvas shows through, just like in a watercolor painting.
Check out some of my process of Negative Painting on my YouTube channel today! It might help you in your own painting journey. Thanks!
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