"Sun Giants"

Another sunflower posting to try to address the negative painting question I was asked yesterday. "Any tips on how to paint negatively?" It's a bit of backwards thinking and you definitely have to have dry, dry, dry paper to get the hard edges. It's a progressive "veiling" of consecutively darker washes (which again, have to dry in between layers). I always recommend in my workshops to restate your lines with a pencil and sometimes even putting an X in the space/shape you wish to paint around. Basically negative painting is painting around a shape and developing a background which is darker than the foreground.