I have been working on a couple of books for Level 3 Art and Design. It is an accordion style binding and it takes lots of gluing steps to put them together. So I have little to show for the work I did today.
But I can show you a sketch from my sketch book. It was partially painted in the negative painting technique. It’s not a very good photo as the light wasn’t good by the time I got around to taking photos. I hope to get the books finished to show you next week.
I told you last week about a landscape painting that might not be salvageable. The answer for me was to just keep going. I got a little bit lost when I was painting in the tree section and it looked terrible. I forgot to take any photos but decided I would be go back in and add more dark values in between the trees and get that section figured out better.
So here it is after I added in the dark values and worked out which trees were more in the foreground and which were fading back. I could have left it like this but I felt it could be better. Now to determine what it needed. I used my croppers to see which way I liked it.
Did I like it with less sky or no sky at all? Neither of these seemed to have enough contrast and were a bit boring. So I looked back at my reference book Watercolor Painting Outside the Lines by Linda Kemp and decided I would add more sky and show light coming through the trees. I had tried this on my first attempt but didn’t like the results but thought maybe I had a better handle on how to do it this time. So I added more pink sky with a variety of pinkish tones.
Here’s the end result. I think that is a bit more dramatic, certainly not perfect but I learned a lot about negative space painting with this landscape. So the lesson is, keep going and practice, practice, practice. I have relearn that lesson on a regular basis 🙂
I’m still playing with negative space painting. This was an experiment on a piece of screen printed paper that I had in my stash. It looked very organic to start with so I added some darkness behind the berries and leaves. It has both acrylic and water color paint and the paper was a “mixed media” paper that I have never really liked. And after working on it again, it has reaffirmed that I should never get this type of paper again. The paper feels almost like plastic and has a raised pattern on the surface that is hard to cover. I guess it should have gesso on it to start but since it was already printed, I just went over top of what was there. It is still going to take more practice to really get used to negative space painting. I feel the need to plan more as I have a tendency to get lost in the more intricate details. I painted a second landscape but it is really hideous at the moment and I have to work on it more to see if it is even salvageable.
And the rest of the day was spent packing up to go to my class soon. I have more stuff every time we go. Luckily, there are only 2 sessions left. Otherwise, we might have to rent a U Haul truck to get everything to class.
I got a book from the library today Watercolor Painting Outside the Lines by Linda Kemp. I did a bit of negative space painting on a recent monotype print and liked the results. So I thought I would do some further investigation and try something a bit more complex. I’m still working on a winter theme so decided to try some frost.
I worked on this all day today. You start with the lightest color and then paint the negative spaces increasing the darkness/value of the colors for each layer. So there are four layers of color here. The paint has to be dry in between so I sped up the process by using a heat gun and iron to dry the paper in between layers of paint. It’s an interesting way to paint and you have to keep thinking “backwards” so you don’t paint the wrong bit. But again, I like the results and I think I will try some more of these. Perhaps a winter landscape next time.
Ruth Lane Art 