NEGATIVE PAINTING – LAVA FLOW

The first of two new negative watercolour paintings. This one wasn’t as successful as I’d hoped, and was actually only partially negative! The idea came from a neurographic art piece I saw online, which made me think of flowing volcanic lava. I also added some boiling mud, but I wish I’d left this out as it didn’t turn out as I intended! Can’t win ’em all.

The initial drawing

I quite liked the flowing lines and globular shapes which would represent the lava flows. However, the picture wasn’t really designed to work well as a negative painting and I ended up painting quite a few positive bits along the way.

The first wash, and some detail

I used two colours for the wash, mapping out where the contrasting colours would end up on the painting.

The next photo shows some “positive” painting that I added to create the texture in certain areas. Not too defined as yet.

The second wash

This darkened the colour a little. I also darkened the textured areas a bit more.

The third wash

This darkened the colour some more. At this stage I was ignoring the yellow (lava) areas.

Intensifying the texture

Things were starting to look a little better at this stage.

The fourth wash

For this layer, I started to add some more areas of colour.

Adding some shadows

This was supposed to introduce some dimension into the painting.

Fine lines, and intensifying the texture

This was the first time I had tried using a rigger brush, and I must say it was pretty cool! I’m amazed how much paint it will hold, and what a fine line it will draw. I shall definitely be using this some more in the future.

I also added some ink detail in the texture area to make it appear more three-dimensional.

Starting work on the lava

This first wash covered the entirety of the lava areas, minus a few high spots which I left as the original wash.

Lava second wash

I painted this in a darker orange, leaving some of the previous wash exposed.

Lava third wash

The same applied with this layer, adding a darker orange to fill in the remaining lava areas. I also added more shadows and darkened the mud pool area as well.

The completed painting

I added a few highlights with the white acrylic marker pen, and some little touches of gold, which don’t show up much. The addition of some small light spots outlined with the black pen complete the picture.

A bit of a mish-mash!

Not a true negative painting, and I kept adding bits in the hope that it would improve things. Several times I was tempted to give up and start it again, but in the end I suppose it’s not too bad, so I took the plunge and posted it on here! I think it’s a good thing to share one’s not-so-good stuff as well as one’s successes. I won’t call this a failure because it isn’t quite that bad! I do like the colours – that’s one good thing I can say about it!