NEGATIVE PAINTING – CELLS

The second of two negative paintings I completed recently.

This one was slightly more successful than the lava flow one, but I’m still not entirely satisfied with it. It did stick to the brief of negative painting a bit more, though. It ended up being a mixed media piece rather than an exclusively watercolour painting.

The initial drawing

This one was inspired by another image I saw online, which was basically just two layers, so I added a third layer just under the top layer.

The first wash

Initially I chose just two colours – orange and yellow, but later I added some blue as well. This first wash covered the whole painting.

The third wash

I didn’t remember to photograph the second wash. You can see how with this wash, the colours are intensified, and I have added the blue as well. The second and third washes cover everything except the top layer.

The fourth wash

For the first stage of this one I avoided the middle layer, and darkened the blue area with a mixture of the same blue with some Kuretake Graphite Blue watercolour.

Darkening the fourth wash

I spent a lot of time working on it at this stage as I really didn’t want it to be quite so brown.

Additional detail and shading

The picture more or less decided for itself that it was going to be more brown than I wanted! In this layer I added some more ink work and some shading to try and introduce some dimension.

The completed painting

I used several different materials to complete the picture. I wasn’t satisfied that it looked three-dimensional enough. The middle layer motifs were too dark, so I lightened them with a white coloured pencil. I added further shadows with a combination of black watercolour pencil and ink, and the final stage was to add some shading to the top layer to give it some dimension.

In the end I was quite pleased with this one, but it took a lot of doing! I spent a lot of time on the texture and shading. To start with, it looked as if the shapes in the lower layers were sitting on top of the top mesh, but more intense shading pushed them back down again, and I think I’ve achieved the look that I wanted. Bit of a struggle, though! It has ended up looking more like rocks than cells.