Are you familiar with the term, Negative Painting? It is something that I have tried off and on during the course of my painting career, but never with much success. My brain refuses to cooperate and let my paint brush paint outside the lines, so to speak. There are times when painting this way can be beneficial. Such as inside a flower; painting the negative space around the stamens etc instead of painting the flower parts themselves. Also in backgrounds that have layers such as trees or other vegetation.
A few years ago, I purchased a DVD on the subject of negative painting, but I had never watched it until this weekend. Having no particular thing in mind to paint while at the gallery, I picked up the DVD as I headed out to work. This video, "Painting Outside The Lines, a positive approach to negative painting" was produced by Linda Kemp, a well known Canadian watercolorist.
Most of the exercises that I performed and are depicted on this blog are from her video.
I was amazed to watch her do entire paintings using this technique, and what was more amazing is that she never drew a line, which you will notice, that I had to do.
