NEGATIVE PAINTING/ZENTANGLE CHRISTMAS CARD

This project can be done with any repetitive shape: trees, snowflakes, etc.

        

1.       Begin by taping down card if doing card size, leaving ¼ inch edges. 

2.       Draw some circles for ornaments. Leaving some white, paint background and add some salt for snow effect.

         

3. Paint around the other ornaments in the next value. I plan to go greener as I go, so I used cerulean and pthalo.     With each new layer, before the paint dried, (but was still damp) I spattered with water to keep the snow effect.                                                                                                                                                                        

 

                                                                                                                                                    

4.       Draw in some small background circles for ornaments.

Paint around those with darker value…I used turquoise and green.

You can go darker if you choose. As the paint lost its shine, I

Continue to spatter with water droplets for snow effect. I also darkened some “shadow” areas on the small blue ornaments.

                      

5.       I added some color to the ribbons.

 

6.       I outlined with ultra fine sharpie. Then I used the Sharpie to create a zentangle design on the ball I left white. I could also do the zentangle on some other places.

 

7.       To finish, I cleaned up some of my edges. I added a small touch of quin gold to the white zentangle ball. I also lifted out a faint ribbon for the blue ball beneath the white one. Then I spattered with gouache.

8.       WHAT I COULD CHANGE: I should have been more careful with making the ribbons perfectly vertical. I could add iridescent medium, but I am printing this, so will wait to do it on printed cards.

MORE ABOUT NEGATIVE PAINTING

Before going into the lesson, let me cite several good references on negative painting. Steve Mitchell's Mind of Watercolor youtube has a very good lesson on negative painting. I highly recommend it. Linda Kemp has written two books on the subject, one of which is Watercolor: Painting outside the Lines. Gordon MacKenzie's Complete Watercolorist's Essential Notebook
has several good pages on negative painting. See the end of this blog for 4 other blogs on the subject.

Today we did three exercise to try to understand what negative painting is. Here is a simple explanation: The positive is the shape of an object and the negative space is the space behind the object. In this picture (the stencil) the positive shape of the leaves is on the left; the negative shape is on the right.



To do the first exercise, first use two colors to create a background. Salt to create a little texture.
When it is dry, trace the stencil and paint a color two values different around the shape. That is the negative. When that is dry, draw another shape, and paint around both of those shapes slightly darker values. Dry, and continue to draw and paint around the shapes until you are pleased with the picture.




For The second exercise, draw three circles onto the paper, and paint BEHIND them. I used yellow. T
Dry and draw three more circles, some ovelapping. Then paint around all the circles. (I used pale green) Now you can see white and yellow circles with green background. Then make three more circles, and paint even darker around those. Now I have white, yellow, and pale green circles with a darker green background.

The third exercise is pretty simple monochrome.  Draw a wavy line at the bottom of the page, and paint everything above it a pale value. Dry. Draw another wavy line above the white and into the blue. Then paint everything above that second line a darker shade. Dry, draw a third line, and paint everything above that line darker. Continue until you have several values of the same color. It will look like mountains or ocean waves. 

So why do negative painting? Rarely are any of my pictures totally negative painted. It's usually a combination of positive and negative. Negative painting can make things such as a grove of trees easier to do. 

You can see several of my other blogs on negative painting for more. 

8/13/17  water lilies

8/04/17 Trees

6/03/16 leaves

5/26/16   leaves

Pen and Wash

In class I demonstrated three ways to use pen with watercolor. The pens I used were Sharpie ultra-fine, Micron 005 and Micron 003. You need to use bleed proof, permanent inks, not waterbased.

Pen and Wash: Bee Eater,inked first

Probably the most common method is to ink the drawing first, and then apply washed of water color. When inking you can use several techniques to shade: cross hatching, stipling, scribbles, etc. This bird is a bee eater, and you can use almost any colors, since there are many varieties of color in these birds. I used cross hatching (curved around the branches to accent the roundness of them) and some stipling. It was a snap to wash over these with bright colors.

Pen and Wash: Old West Cabin, sketched in paint first

IN Watercolor Artist magazine, December 2012, DeAnn L. Prosia presents a different approach.
You first draw the basic shapes with your watercolors, not drawing or tracing in pencil first. Lay down sections of color that represent shapes in the image. In this first picture, you can see that I've just sketched with paint.



The second step is to go over the picture more exactly. Draw the actual image on top of the shapes of color. She uses black colored pencil or pen for the foreground, dark indigo for the middle ground, and a medium warm gray for the background. Parts of the drawing may match up to the sections of color that were first laid down and some may not. But it adds interest to the picture.

Then you can go back with a second layer of wtercolr to give more depth. Sometimes more drawing is needed.




Pen and Wash: Old West Cabin, over toned paper

Wet a piece of paper and apply some spatters of color. Allow to dry.



Then, using an ultra fine pen, draw in the picture. Then use smaller pens to add details. Fill in blocks of color. I just liked this with just two colors.