How my first negative painting was just a ‘painting’

Negative painting involves painting the negative space rather than the positive space, as artists most commonly do. It is a style that I have seen used to great effect with watercolour paints. For my upcoming yogi collection I am planning on using negative painting but have not previously tried it. In this blog post I will talk about my attempt at a first negative painting, which turned out to be more ‘painting’ than ‘negative painting’.

‘Amongst the Trees’ watercolour and masking fluid on watercolour paper

My first negative painting

It is always exciting to try new techniques and materials. I have had my eye on negative painting as something to try out for awhile now.

It may have been a bit too ambitious to plan to create an entire collection using a technique that I have no experience with, but no guts, no glory ;) This is my first attempt at negative painting… and it didn’t go exactly to plan. It turns out that habits formed over a lifetime of painting the positive space, rather than the negative space are hard to break.

So ultimately I think that my first negative painting was not really a negative painting at all. However, I do still like the resulting artwork, so I thought I would share the process with you all.

Inspiration

For my first negative painting, I chose the reference photograph submitted in my recent call for yogis by Dianne Kong. I love the softness of the foliage in the background contrasting with the sharp focus on her form.

The colours in the reference photograph are natural and rich, but I wanted to add hints of pinks and purples. I thought that the addition of these colours would give the piece a more surreal quality.

Side by side comparison of the reference image of Deanne Kong (Photographer Sofia Calado) and ‘Amongst the Trees’

Artistic Process

For this piece I wanted to use masking fluid as well as the negative painting techniques. I like masking fluid because it leaves some nice clean bright white spaces. It also gives structure to my work, as my watercolour style is generally quite loose.

I then painted a horizontal pattern in predominantly blue and purple watercolours . This pattern went over both the figure and the background to create the base layer of colour.

After that I started adding layers of paint around the figure to build up the background landscape. I also couldn’t resist adding some of the shadows to the figure.

Adding the shadow details within the figure was probably where I went wrong and this piece transitioned from being my first negative painting to being just a painting. I also think that I did not focus enough on creating depth in the figure using the negative painting techniques. Instead I put too much detail into creating the background effect.

Progress photos of ‘Amongst the Trees’

Even though ‘Amongst the Trees’ didn’t really end up as a good representation of negative painting, I still really like it. I think that now that I have this experience when I didn’t achieve the effect that I was going for, that my next negative painting will be more successful.