NEGATIVE PAINTING FINISHED

Here is where I left off on the negative painting, with the background painted (in this case with blue tones to emphasize the warms in the leaves). Note that it does not have to be all one color, just so that the colors flow into each other.

Next I darken some areas behind the leaves to emphasize the ones I want to be important. (notice the rounder leaves on the left) To separate shapes, where one leaf or stem is on top of another, I paint beneath or behind the upper leaf, painting the shadow of it onto whatever is underneath it. Since my underpainting is dry, I can still use wet into wet: wet the area to be painted, brush color into that area, and use a clean damp brush to soften the color away.

Now I want to do some clean up with my lifting (scrubbing) brush. On narrow parts, like the stems, I can put masking tape on each side and drag my clean wet scrubber brush across the area to make it lighter. I have also softened other areas on the leaves that I think are too dark. (This is old paint, so it did not lift as well as newer paint.)

I needed the leaf on the far right top to become much less important, so I used a green grayed with orange in it to color that leaf. It's usually not a good idea to have the white running off the edge of your painting. I added some detail, like veins in some leaves. You can add as much detail in your painting as you need, but I liked this without much detail at all.