NEGATIVE PAINTING

When I first came across this, I thought, “What…?” I was intrigued, and decided to investigate.

The idea

The idea of negative painting is that you don’t paint the objects; you paint the negative space between the objects. Sounds counter-intuitive? Actually it’s quite good training for looking at the spaces between objects, which is a great skill to learn when drawing.

The method

You start by covering the whole surface with a very light watercolour wash, varying the colour – if you are following a reference, you approximate the lightest areas with corresponding colours. For more abstract subjects or overall patterns, you can simply vary the colours randomly, to produce a more interesting effect at the end.

Once this is done and it is fully dry, you draw a few shapes which will be the top layer, or foreground. It is important not to draw too much at this stage, or you won’t have enough room to draw further layers. You then select a slightly darker colour, and paint this all over the surface apart from the areas you have drawn. Then you draw more shapes between the first ones, and again, choosing a yet darker shade, paint around these and the original ones. You repeat the process until the whole area is covered – usually about four layers will suffice. The final background layer will be quite dark, if not black.

When the painting is complete, you can add further detail to the objects themselves, for example the veins of leaves, or simply add doodling. It is also very effective to add a top layer in gold – either random lines, or further shapes in keeping with the overall theme of the painting.

The effect

This method of painting produces a wonderful sense of depth. You can make the objects smaller with each subsequent layer, which enhances this effect. You can also overlap some objects so that they appear to be behind, and further away, than the layer above. It is a very pleasing effect.

My paintings

I have now done three negative paintings.

1. Leaves

Unfortunately, apart from the third painting, I did not photograph any intervening stages, but only the final result.

Additional detailing was done on this painting, using my Staedtler fineliner markers, which are non-permanent. The veins on the leaves, and the little berries, were added at the end with a fine metallic gold Posca acrylic paint marker. This pen is now my favourite for adding gold detailing as it is very fine, and so far has not created any blobs. It glides smoothly over the surface with minimal pressure, giving excellent results.

2. Steampunk

This one was great fun to do, and inspired by Miss Betsi on YouTube – she has invented her own version of steampunk which she has called “Mesopunk” after the artwork of Meso-America; she is a Mexican American with a great interest in the ancient culture of her original homeland.

Again, the detailing was added with the Staedtler fineliners. There is no gold on this one. I also added some further watercolour to the objects to create the impresson of rust, and some shading. Each object was outlined with a brown fineliner. I find that outlining the objects when the painting is completed refines the detail and gives the painting more cohesion. Choosing a colour in keeping with the painting is preferable to using a fine black archival marker which might be too harsh and contrasting.

3. Hearts

For this one, my hubby lent me his small set of St. Petersburg (now known as White Night) watercolours as he was curious to know what I thought of them. He has had this box for many years, and we looked up the make online the other night. He was pleased to see that they were still available, still being made in the Russian factory in St. Petersburg. The paints are of very high quality, very rich in pigment. The range of colours was small, so I did augment the selection with some of my own, especially the permanent rose and the Daniel Smith lunar black, and the burnt umber – there was nothing very dark in the St. Petersburg set, apart from a “neutral tone” which looked grey (not as dark as Payne’s grey) but this made everything very purple!

Throughout this project, I have sought to use my newly acquired interest in granulating watercolours. I’ve been doing some experimentation with these, finding out which colours naturally granulate, and the effects of other products to produce the effect. I saw online that using salt water with a wash will cause the paint to granulate. My initial experiments proved unsuccessful but a reply to my comment on that particular video produced the reply that you need to add a lot of salt water to get the effect.

Here is the initial background layer of the hearts painting, with the first hearts lightly drawn in with pencil.

There is definitely some granulation going on here, despite the colours (lemon yellow and permanent rose) being staining, not granulating, watercolours. Here’s a close-up.

For subsequent layers, I used Winsor and Newton granulating medium.

Here is the finished painting.

For the final two layers of background, I darkened the colours by adding some Daniel Smith lunar black, which is a highly granulating paint. I bought a small tube of this recently – at great expense! – and it is amazing. The background was built up with two different basic colours – reds and browns, to add interest, and I continued with this as I darkened each successive layer. There were some fairly noticeable divisions between the two colours in one or two places, so I worked over these, and where the paint ws lighter, I added some stippling with the brown Staedtler fineliner, which accentuates the granulation effect. I am very pleased with the result of this.

Using various colours from the Staedtler fineliner set, I outlined the hearts and added doodles to the most prominent ones. The final stage was to add the large heart outline shapes and the small dots with the gold Posca marker.

Watch this space!

I am thoroughly enjoying this technique. I am using my small approximately A5 sized Arteza 300 gsm cold-pressed watercolour sketchbook for these paintings. Keeping the size small means that I can complete a painting in a couple of evenings. I use my heat tool to speed up the drying process, especially with the initial wash which is very wet, having worked wet-on-wet. You can’t progress to subsequent layers if the previous one is still wet, and the finished painting must be completely dry before you add any detailing or embellishment.

Further ideas

I’ve been practising drawing quirky houses in my design drawing book recently, and thought they would make a fun subject for this style of painting. I would draw a line of houses towards the bottom of the page, and subsequent layers would be houses behind the first ones, at a higher elevation, making a nice cityscape.

I’d also like to do butterflies and flowers. I have seen a couple of people on YouTube doing waterlilies and trees, which make great subjects, and I thought that a koi carp pond, or an underwater ocean scene would also work, as the layers would provide the effect of depth. Actually, any subject would work – it’s just down to your imagination!

When I’ve done enough of them, I am planning to bind them together into a book. It will be a fun project.

So… watch this space!