Autumn Watercolor Leaves: Negative Painting

As you may or may not know, the Paint With Me Challenge prompts that I select for all of us that participate are directly inspired by the content that I'm guiding members through inside the Paint With Me Community.

In October, the topic Autumns Leaves using negative painting.

If you aren't sure what negative painting using watercolors is, then all you need to do is google or search on YouTube: "Negative Painting Watercolors" and you'll see lots of wonderful examples!

I was especially inspired by Brenda Swenson and Rick Surowicz's examples when gathering information and inspiration on different negative painting styles.

Before this month, I had never specifically painted a negative painting using watercolors. I define a "negative" painting as a painting that mainly uses the technique of negative painting to create depth through repetition of layers of similar objects.

For me, it helps to look at negative paintings as 2 main techniques:

1. Negative painting (or in other words, painting "around" objects)

2. Layering (or in other words, adding depth/value...while painting "around objects)

And when you do this with similar objects in a sort of "patterned" or "layered" way, you end up with what I define as a classic negative painting.

Here's mine (the one I guided Paint With Me members through in our community this month):

I share the above because I picked this month's reference photo because I wanted to give people a chance to explore negative painting paired with other techniques (for a real challenge!)

Mostly, I wanted to challenge myself to try negative painting using a reference photo - especially this one because it has such a beautiful strong source of light. And capturing glowing light using watercolors is something I would love to work on and continue to work on!

So in case you aren't already a part of the free Paint With Me Challenge, you can click right here for the reference photo in case you want to try painting it as well!

If you want to see how my attempt for October's challenge turned out, I posted a time-lapse video on YouTube of my painting process. Click below to watch it!

SUPPLIES USED IN THIS VIDEO

• Arches Sheet (cut to 8x10)

• Princeton Heritage Brushes (Round 10)

• Princeton Neptune Mottler (Size 1 1/2)

• Escoda Prado (Round 8)

• Daniel Smith Watercolors

  Colors: Monte Amiata Natural Sienna, New Gamboge, Hansa Yellow Medium, Naples Yellow, Pyrrol Orange, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Paynes Grey, Sap Green

• Hardboard Panel

• Masking Tape

REFERENCE PHOTO

• Matthias Heil on Unsplash

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Thanks for stopping by!
Susan

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