Another negative painting--peaches and grapes.

 

Two weeks ago, we made a background wash by soaking a sheet of paper and adding 3 colors that blended softly together, no hard edges.

Last week, we drew a picture onto the background, trying to keep the center of interest in a place that had either white space or some interest to it.

I pointed out an article in Watercolor Artist magazine, spring 2022, by Mary Elle (p. 10) called Betwixt and Between. It was describing negative painting, a subject that I am very enthusiastic about. Linda Kemp is another artist that paints negatively...you might say she wrote the book on it. (because she did)

Here is the background that I painted. I also did another background that I put a different picture on.

Pardon the yucky picture...color looks weird. But you can see the sketch of peaches

that I did.

My first step was to choose a color that was contrasting, and I painted around the two most important shapes, the peaches in front. Brush the colors away from these shapes...you can even use a fine mist sprayer to allow the paint to gently drift into the background, yet leave a hard edge around these shapes.

Don't try to work too darkly at this point. Take your time with layering. 

The next step was to "find" more shapes by painting around the leaf shapes and enhancing the peach shapes also. Work a little at a time, keeping the area wet enough to allow the color to blend with the background without hard edges, except around the shapes you want to bring out. 

You are working backward in layers. The greatest contrast will be around your center of interest.

Keep working around shapes until you have the effect you desire.

When I'd painted all I wanted to negatively, I did some positive painting. My original intention was to paint it much darker in the background, but I changed my mind. So I added some green to darken the leaves and used french ultramarine and burnt sienna on the stems. 

I deepened some of the peach colors, especially in the back peach. For those color

I used warm yellow, transparent pyrol orange, and alizarin. I only used a blush on the bottom one, wetting the peach and then dropping in color. I emphasized the "dimples" in the peaches with some alizarin. 

For the leaves, I negative painted the centers (see my last post on leaves), and did very faint veins.

On this one I did a sketch of grapes. (The background really isn't that dark, it's just the photo)

This color is off, but it shows that the first thing I did was lift out some of the dark blue in the top, where I want light. I like to lift with a Winsor Newton #4 or #6 filbert Monarch. They are not too expensive and don't tear at the paper like some lifting or scrubbing brushes will. 

I did my first layer of negative painting with some blue on the bottom grapes and top grapes.

Here you can see I've painted between the top leaves and stems and around some of the leaves.

I've done some positive painting on the leaves, but then negative painted around the veins after the first layer dried. I added some purple as I painted around the green grapes, then when that dried, 

negative painted in some dark grapes. I also started to negative paint the grapes.

To do the negative painting in the grapes, you simply paint in the spaces between the grapes where it would be darker.  You can also see where I've added even darker blue at the very top to negative paint in some grapes. Then I lifted some hi-lights on those grapes.

I also painted some grapes very faintly at the bottom to look like they are in the background.