NEGATIVE WATERCOLOURS – FIG LEAVES

Not strictly speaking fig leaves – this tree in our garden doesn’t produce figs, and we have been told it is something else (a false fig perhaps?) but it’s close enough for our purposes.

Here is the reference photo.

I am not a huge fan of all-green English landscape paintings, so I decided to vary the colours somewhat.

Layer 1 – the initial drawing

This is the original drawing done with an HB pencil. I applied masking fluid over the stems with a dip pen, and then spattered some more over the whole surface. I added a light wash of cadmium yellow and sap green onto a wet background.

Layer 2

Beginning to darken the background a little with some negative painting.

Layer 3

I used my dagger brush to apply more colour to this layer, introducing some yellow ochre.

Layer 4

Unfortunately this photo came out a bit out of focus for some reason. I am darkening the background quite a lot here. At this stage I was beginning to lose the pencil lines and some of the leaves became distorted.

Layer 5

Further darkening, during the process of which I suggested more leaf shapes in the background by using negative painting.

Layer 6

I thought the whole thing was beginning to look a bit brown, so I introduced some purple, using my dagger brush.

Removing the masking fluid

As expected, the stems looked very stark white, and would need toning down.

Adding more shading

At this stage I had removed the painting from the board, thinking this would be the finished result. Looking at it from a distance, it was clear that more shading was needed on the leaves which were being overlaid by leaves on the top layer.

The completed painting

To achieve this, I used a couple of colours from the Tombow Dual Brush Marker set – a dark green and a brown, blending in the hard edges with a fine wet brush.

I am not entirely happy with this painting. I think I put too much detail into the initial drawing and much of this got lost along the way and I lost some definition in the leaf shapes.

It will be fun to attempt another leaf collection like this, and I already have a reference photo from the garden which I could use.

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