Negative Painting Watercolor Simple Butterfly and Floral Shapes

1. Introduction: Painting Butterflies with Negative Painting: Welcome back to class. Today, we're going to continue exploring negative painting, but this time in a slightly more intentional way. In the last lesson, we focused on discovering shapes and letting forms emerge naturally. In this class, we're going to start with a simple butterfly and floral shapes and learn how to build around them to bring them forward. This is a really nice next step because it's going to help you feel a bit more in control while still keeping that soft loose watercolor feel. We'll begin by lightly sketching or tracing a few simple shapes and then we'll be building a soft background using a wet on wet technique. From there, I'll guide you through layering around shapes using negative painting so you can start to see those butterflies and flowers come to life. If you're new to the style of painting, don't worry about making everything perfect. The goal here is to understand the process and get comfortable working around your shapes rather than trying to paint it directly. Take your time, keep your hand relaxed, and enjoy watching the painting develop step by step. So go ahead, gather your supplies, and let's get started. 2. Supplies and Understanding Negative Painting: Today we're going to learn a little bit more about negative painting. And if you haven't taken the class already, take the class that I just posted a couple days ago, which really dives into the basics of negative painting when we learned how to paint around an object. We first made a moon and then we painted the sky around it and add some details. That was our basics, and then we took it a little bit further, and we added in some details. First, we had just created something very, very simple. There were no flowers on here to begin with. It was just blobs of paint, little colors that were just swashed all over the place. And then we found our flowers, and we discovered where the flowers were, and we painted around them and added in this really nice background using our indigo paint, which brought forward the flowers. So today, we're going to do something similar. We're just going to take it a little bit further, and we're going to create a design but something more like this. So this is going to the one that we're going to make today. We're going to be adding some butterflies in and some flowers and making a display and arrangement, an art piece that you can be really proud of. I'm really excited to get into that. You'll find this sheet as a downloadable in the class project so that you can download this piece of paper. You can either cut these out and use them as a stencil to draw around or you can use carbon copy paper and put that down. Remember that the shiny side or the darker side goes against the paper that you're trying to transfer it to, and the dollar side goes up like that. And then you can trace around here, and it'll transfer a line onto your painting area. So I gave this to you so that you can print this out. I made four different sizes of butterflies so you can decide where you want them, how many you want them, and what sizes. So you don't feel like you need to use all of them. Maybe you just want to use one. Maybe you want to use them all. Maybe you want to overlap them. This is where your creativity gets to really shine. You get to do whatever you want to do. Then also, just in case you wanted it, I gave you a couple different flowers. So some of these are a little bit more detailed and may or may not work out for you. So just use them sparingly and carefully if you decide to use these too. But the rest of these, I think, would probably work pretty well for you. I didn't give you stems and leaves because I think you're going to be able to do those all by yourself. And even these are so simple that I think you could probably paint around something that you've hand drawn. But in case you want this, I've given this to you and I'm going to go ahead and use this when I use my class project because I want to show you the very, very basics and I want to meet you where you're at and make this as comfortable and as easy as possible. But so you just know your level of expertise, and you fit wherever you need to. Today I'm going to be using this beautiful watercolor set. I just received this and I love it. I am so excited about these colors, and I think this is just so beautiful, especially for spring. So I'm going to be using that set. There may be a little bit more on the grayer, whiter side. Maybe a little bit more opaque like a guash, but they are still watercolor and you can use more water and less paint so that you get that transparent feel. So if you ever use this set, just make sure you use a lot of water to give yourself that watercolor feel. I'm going to go ahead and get this started. These are currently dry, so I'm going to get those wet and get them um, primed and ready to go for our class project. Since we have already dived into what negative painting is today for the class, we're just going to dive right in and do the project. If you need more guidance on a step by step, please go back and watch that other class where we did the moon and discovering and finding our flowers because today, we're going to actually be creating a beautiful masterpiece on our piece of paper. Now, I am using cotton paper. Because I'm going to be using a lot of water and a lot of paint, and I wanted to have a higher quality paper. I think it's going to work a little bit better. I did tape it down. It's just a sheet of paper. So I put tape on all four sides so that it lays flat. That way, as it dries, it will also return to the same exact size. It is dry, and I'm going to start with a dry piece of paper, and then we're going to be wetting it through the process. Have several different sizes of paint brushes. I'm not sure exactly which sizes I'm going to be using. I, of course, always like my size six and a size eight in my round brushes. These are the Princeton Heritage brushes, and they're probably my two favorite brushes. You'll see me using those a lot. I also have this. It's just a squirrel hair. Really a great brush, holds a lot of water and is really nice and floppy. I like that one. I do have a smaller one for a detail brush, and then I do have my 1 " Princeton flat brush. I sometimes like to use that if I'm trying to fill up a whole area with water or with paint. I have a couple of choices here. I'm not sure that I'll get to using all of those, but that's what I have in case you find them. Um, let's see. I think, and I've discussed that you might want to have carbon paper, or you can just cut these out with the scissors and then trace around them, or you could free hand them. I tried to make these butterflies really, really basic and simple to allow you the freedom of feeling like you could possibly even just hand draw them yourself. So the first thing we're going to take a look at, and this is just on a piece of paper, this is just a printout is my butterflies are going to be probably the lightest thing, and all my color is going to be coming from what I paint around it. That's what's creating that negative painting a feel where the object itself is the lightest and the background is the darkest. Then you can also take note that around the butterfly, we are getting the darker edges so that it really makes those butterflies stand out. Same over here, you can see that my darker areas are here, if this butterfly was sitting here in this lighter area, you wouldn't have as much contrast between the butterfly and its background, and then it might not stand out as much. We want to make sure that we remember when we are painting to keep our butterflies light and our backgrounds darker. Then you'll notice that my flowers that are here, are mid tone. They're not as light as my butterflies, but they're not as dark as my background. That was intentional to create some dimension within my painting. Now, I did add some little leaves and some branches and whatnot, and we'll see what we get to. We'll dive right in in the next lesson. See you there. 3. First Layer: Creating a Soft Background: First thing I'm going to do is create the first layer. The first layer is this background color. Now, this is not just paper. It could be. It could just be paper color, but actually has a very faint color added to it. I'm going to use my paint and I'm going to put one cover of paint over the whole thing. And maybe add a little variation here and there, but basically keeping the whole thing one color and then on top of that, we'll be adding our butterflies. Let's dive in. To begin, I use my wide 1 " brush and I'm going to wet this down the whole paper. It doesn't need to be soaking wet. It just needs to have a nice amount of water just so that it is wet enough that the paint when it gets added onto it, flows a little bit. Anytime I see any puddles of water, I'm going to brush those away because I don't want to have any puddles, but I also don't want to have any dry spots. If I see a dry spot like that, I'm going to wet it and then just move that water around going both directions. To make sure that it's nice and level and even. Not the paper because it's cotton is going to start to soak that water up and just absorb that water, which is really what we're going for here. I'm going to be starting to add in a little bit of paint. I'm going to be using some pinks and some purples and maybe even some greens at some point. And you'll see that I am just dabbing my paint brush into that paint and moving it over here and adding it to my page. I'm not trying to make it even. I don't mind that this area is darker and this area is lighter, that's totally fine. I might even just go ahead and grab a little bit of this purple just to add in another color. I'm not exactly sure where the butterflies are going to go yet. I'm just adding some color to it. So that I maybe a little too much, but I also know that that paint is going to dry lighter once we get a chance to get that dry the paint will dry lighter. So we're going to add just a little bit more pink on top. I usually have paper towel up here and I'm missing my paper towel. I might have to go get that while this dries. But I think I just got a little bit too much water on here, so I'm just going to dab up. Typically, I would use a paper towel to dab it up, but I'm just going to use this cloth, which is fine. Just to dab up any extra water that was sitting on top because I don't want it to be flowing that much. I got little too carried away there. Okay. I'm going to let this dry. I'm going to go grab my paper towels, let this dry. When I get back, if it's not completely dry, I will use my heat tool. I just have a heat gun here that I can use to dry this off. But if I use it too soon, I run the risk of creating back flows and textures in this that I am not looking to create. I'm going to allow this to dry naturally, at least while you run downstairs and grab some paper towels. I'll be right back. Okay, I got my paper towels and I'm reset, and this was mostly dry, but I don't want this to be damp at all because when you go to paint the next layer, if your butterfly area on the inside is still damp, the paint is going to seep into your butterfly because you have to remember that the paint will flow anywhere that the paper is wet. I need to make sure that my areas where my butterflies are going to go are 100% dry. They can't be even slightly wet. So I made sure that this was dry. There are some edges here where I'm going to be doing my flowers that I can still feel slight dampness to this area. So I'm not too worried about that because I know I'm going to put my butterfly here and another one over here, and I made sure those two were completely dry by using my heat gun. We need to re wet this because I know that it was really sudden for you because of the magic of videoing, but I will need to re wet that because I did take about 5 minutes to get that completely dry. Take your time and pause the video and make sure that yours is completely dry before you move on. I told you that I was going to be using this and tracing it so that you could see what I'm referring to. I love this big one, but I'm not sure if that's if I want that big of a butterfly, I think I'm going to put this butterfly here and instead of straight on, I'm going to put him on an angle like he's flying. So somewhere in that general area, I'm just going to hold my paper down with my left hand and then just insert this copy paper underneath it. Then I'm going to trace that using a pencil. Now, I'm going to use a mechanical pencil because it's what I have here on my desk. But if all you have is a number two pencil, whatever you have is going to be fine. I just really highly recommend that you go as lightly as possible. You're just trying to get a very light outline onto your watercolor paper because this will be very difficult to erase, especially since you've already painted on here. You don't want to be using an eraser and lifting up that paint. With a very light hand, and you can even tell I mean, I am just barely touching and then we're going to take a look underneath and see did that work. And yes, I can very lightly see where that outline is and that's good enough for me. I'm just going to very lightly outline this butterfly. It's a very simple shape, which is nice and I think that's going to make it easier for painting. Because we are going to be painting around the butterfly. We will not paint inside. Again, holding onto my paper and my carbon copy, I can lift it up and I can see that butterfly is there. Now I'm going to put another butterfly probably over in this area, and I think I'm going to use the smallest one. I think I'm going to put it about in in this region, right here. I'm just going to trace this butterfly again, using a very light hand, not pressing down at all, just letting the pencil roll across my page. Because they're very simple, I'm going to be able to see those. I'm not putting in my flowers yet because that's going to come in the next layer. Now you can see that whatever is in the inside of this butterfly is what my actual butterfly is going to look like. I've put a little bit more darker purple in this area. This butterfly is going to have a purple texture where this one is going to be almost white with just a hint of pink on it. That's what that final butterfly is going to look like because we're never going to be putting paint on the inside of these two butterflies. So now I'm going to go through and add another layer, I'm going to get my paintbrush out again and I'm going to spray down this palette. Again, not really sure what color I'm going to need, but I'll get it started. Get this wet, but go around these butterflies. When I go to go around them, excuse me, I'm going to be careful, maybe use a softer paintbrush than a flat edge and just go around those butterflies, getting into all the edges, just outlining it. And adding that extra water there because we're going to be putting paint right up to it, but not on the inside. Okay, so I got that outlined and then I can bring in a little bit more water it doesn't match the edge because we're going to be adding another layer. I'm just adding some water around the outside edges at this point. While you're painting water if you go back and look at your first one because this took you a long time and you feel like it's just got a little too dry on that first butterfly, you can always just re wet that area and just make sure that it gets another wetting down with your water. Nothing wrong with adding another layer of water. It doesn't have to be perfect because you're going to be getting in there with your wet paint brush and getting into the details. That's fine. This is close enough, and I'm just going to around. Make sure there's enough water around this first one because we're really painting with a wet on wet technique for this. I'm going to use this paint brush and probably one of these smaller ones to go around these butterflies. See dripped just a little bit of water on the inside. That might be a problem, so I'm going to avoid that one for right now. Coming in with my paint, I'm just going to add a darker color very carefully around my butterfly. It doesn't have to be the darkest because we're going to be putting another layer on, but I do want it to be darker. You can always dip your paint brush back into the water and move that around Remember, whatever colors you put down, it will get lighter once they are dry. Right now, I can still see my lines from the tracing, that's okay. I'm not too worried about that. That's going to eventually cover it over with the third layer. But for now, I'm just getting close. And then when we go to do it the final time, I will probably use a detail brush and make sure I get those lines covered over with a little darker color. So I'm just going to add some extra paint in here, and then I'm going to use this other paint brush and just kind of move this around a little bit. Like I said, you don't have to go edge to edge on this one because we will be putting another layer of paint on, but I do want it to come out to where I know my flowers are going to be because basically what we are painting right now is the layer that the flowers are going to whatever color we have down on this layer is our flower color. I know my flowers are going to be in some of these areas, so I'm just making those a little bit more interesting. And I have that paper towel now, so I can also just come in with my paper towel and blot up some of this and create another texture lift up some of that paint. Okay. I like that. I am going to let that dry for a couple of minutes and then I will finish it off with my heat gun. I don't really want to create any blooms, so I don't want to add more water at this point, and I don't want to dry it off too soon to create any hard edges. So I'm going to let that dry completely and then I will 4. Second Layer: Building Around Simple Flower Shapes: Came back to show you something so that maybe you can learn from my mistake. That last time that I did the second layer, I said that these areas for my butterflies were dry enough and obviously they were not. I'm going to get it close up here so that you can see how my second layer into my first layer that although I thought this section of the paper was dry enough, it wasn't what I am referring to that if you don't have your paper dry enough, that second layer is going to bleed in because wherever your paper is wet, even if it's just damp, it will bleed in. I didn't paint inside the line, but the paper absorbed it because that paper area was slightly damp. I need to stress that you make sure that each layer is 100% dry before you move on to the next layer. I jumped the gun I think this is going to be fine and I'm going to work with it and I can always fix that. I'll actually maybe make it look a little bit more because it will have this jagged edge once it gets finished. But I want you to see that. Now I have dried this and I feel like it's dry, but I feel like it's at the same dryness that the last one was where I can still feel a slight coldness to it and which tells me that it's still slightly damp. Um, I think the last time I touched it and I was like, Oh, it's warm. It's fine. But I think it's warm because I was using my heat gun and I didn't let it cool fast long enough. So I'm going to let this sit like this. Now that I think it's dry, I'm going to let it sit for another 10 minutes. I'm going to go grab a cup of tea, and then I'm going to come back and dry it off one more time with the heat tool, and then we'll get started on that next layer. Okay, it has been about 5 minutes, and what I've decided to do is go ahead and trace because it's dry enough that I can trace on, but I'm not going to paint it yet. I might give it another 5 minutes after I trace this before I start to paint the next layer. But I can get some flowers added to it. So going back to my sheet, I know that I want to put a couple flowers, maybe two or three down in here, maybe one or two going up the edges, maybe one or two over here. And then I think that's it. I think I'll then add in some leaves and such. I'm just going to lay my carbon paper over it, and then I know that I want one of these smaller flowers up here. Again, just using a very light touch, I'm just going to outline around these flowers. I don't have to worry about the center because we're not going to be painting. We'll add in some details later. While I'm still waiting for this to dry, I'm going to add in where I think I want some simple leaves and simple stems. And I don't need to add a lot. I just need to add some. And I'll just note very light. I'm double sided because I know I'm going to need to leave that area unpainted. I like to have my stems going in different directions. Because I know that if I put some paint on top of these leaves, I'll still be able to see them. I might actually do another layer and allow some of these green areas these leaf areas to get green. I'm going to dry this one more time with my heat gun. Come back and show you what I mean. Okay. I believe that this is dry now, but I can't stress enough that it takes a long time for your paper to dry, take your time and you'll be much more happy with your outcome if you take that time to get your paper completely dry. I wet down my palette here, that's ready to go, and now I'm going to make a plan. What I'm going to do is this next layer, the third layer. I'm going to make sure that I add some green on top of my leaf areas, even if it's just in some of them because then we'll come back and do a fourth layer for the final layer. That way, my greens will stay and whatever color I put on top will push down the other greens. I'll show you what I mean by that. Right now, I am focusing on my flowers. If you see where the flour is, everything that's on the inside is going to stay exactly the way. It will be a pink and this one will be a purple and a purple, purple pink, and then these are going to be lighter color, which I really love. So using a more fine detail, I'm going to use my eight. I'm going to wet down around we're going to work on these three first because I'm concerned that if I work too broad, my other where I've started is going to get dry already. So I don't care about these leaves because I've decided that that's going to just be another layer. I won't need to draw them or anything. They're going to stay there because I'm not putting a really dark color on top, just another light shade. I should be able to still see those leaves and stems. And I don't have to get real particular about any of this because it's really just the flowers that I'm going to be going around. I don't have to go and do the whole page. But I am going to work in sections. I think that's just going to work out better for me. Being careful not to paint, even if I'm going to get near the butterfly to go around that butterfly because if you put water inside that butterfly, it's going to bleed in there. That is not the look we're going for because we are doing negative painting. Basically, what we are ending up doing is painting the top layer, what's going to look like the top, the closest to you is actually what we're painting first. The butterflies should pop the most because then the flowers because they'll be the next lightest, and then the leaves and then the background will be the background, which will be the darkest. Like I said, I'm gonna just work in sections. So now just add a little darker color down here. Let that come up close to those flower heads. I'm gonna use several different colors so I can move it around. Okay, let's choose a new color. Maybe some of this lighter pink. Not everything has to be dark. Especially since we know we're going to be adding another layer. We haven't added Too much. Add a little purple. I just using some water to push that around dilute it down a little bit. Remember this is just one of the layers. Stage there, a little bit here. I'm not painting the leaves. I'm just putting paint in those general areas, being careful not to hit those flower heads. It doesn't have to coat it. Just going around it. Say even if just some of these areas get some greens moving that around. Trust the process. This is going to look great by the time we're done. I careful not to paint over my flowers or my butterflies because those are never going to get painted again until we go back in and add in any details that we want to add in. Okay, I'm going to let that dry and then I'm going to dry it completely with my heat gun. 5. Final Layer: Adding Depth and Contrast: You see how much water I'm putting down and how much paint and how much scrubbing and going over it and over and over it. That is why I really recommend using a cotton paper, 100% cotton. Um is probably ideal just because with this style of painting, you're going to be going over it over and over and over again. I want you to be successful and feel happy with your outcome. And if you're not using a high quality paper for this project, you might regret that. Other times, I am not going to tell you that you need to have a high quality paper because it's not always vital for every single project. But in this particular case, I would recommend that better style paper. I'm just moving that purple around just so that it feels like it's intentional and getting put in different locations. I have not pre thought this through. I am not going, oh, I wanted to make sure that this area was purple and that area was blue and I'm just going with my heart. So as I'm painting it, I'm looking at the surrounding areas and wondering what color I need to make things. You can use a smaller paintbrush if a smaller paintbrush would be easier for you when you go around the items, that would be fine. Feel free to use a smaller paint brush. What, just add a little lightness up in here by adding in some gray. Since everything's really wet, it's just going to blend very nicely. Make sure you're using enough water so that you don't get so that it's not too rigid. You're not trying to paint like a hard color. It should be very transparent at this point. Don't forget those leaves, paint around those leaves. If you're not feeling like your flowers popping, put a little darker color around it or your leaves, put a little darker color and then blend it out. I just added in that purple and now I'm going to just blend it out pushing that paint around. Let's see I wanted to be a smaller color, a smaller paint brush. I want this to be a little darker pink in here. Around those leaves. Blending it out. Add more water. If you're not feeling like it's blending, add a little bit more water. You can also lift. So if you like you have too much, you could just come in with a paper towel or your paintbrush and just lift some of it. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to let this completely dry, and then we're going to come back and in the next lesson, add some details to it. So let your painting dry and then I'll meet you in the next lesson. And 6. Finishing Details: Bringing Your Painting to Life: Get a little little of this darker pink and just put a little center to it. Yeah, it's kind of pretty. Try different colors. Okay. Fun. Let that dry. I'm going to go get my detail brush. I think maybe I like that better than the gel pens. Again, I'm not going to put it on the whole thing just in certain areas. I kind of helps make that flower stand out a little bit more, a little bit more definition. Same with a butterfly. I think I definitely like that better than the gelpen look. But maybe yours will be different and so you just choose whatever works best for you. Basically just using purple and pink. Just a little mix between the two. So I'm making blue. So I'm making purple pink. Basically using the same colour paints that I've been using. Maybe just a little bit of the green. For some of the leaves, Okay. I think we're coming to the end of the class project. I want you to come back to the next lesson, our last lesson, where we're going to wrap this up and talk about what we learned in the class and look forward to the next class because boy, we have some really fun things coming for the next class where you're going to get a chance to put all of this into practice. Come back to the last lesson and we're going to wrap this all up. 7. Final Thoughts and Project Wrap Up: I hope you enjoyed working through this class and continuing to explore negative painting in a new way. This time, you were able to start with simple shapes and build around them, which gives you a little bit more control while still keeping that soft expressive look. This negative painting process was very different from the last one, and so your painting will look very different, which is exactly what we want. Each approach helps you understand this technique a little bit more deeply. If your piece didn't turn out exactly the way you imagined, that's completely okay. This is all part of the learning process. You'll begin to start to see shapes, build layers, and become more comfortable with the process. It just takes practice. Take a moment and look at your finished piece and notice how those shapes stayed clean and bright just by painting around them. That really is the power of negative painting, and it's something that you're going to continue to build on as you practice. Would really love to see what you created. Please take a moment and upload your project to the class gallery. It's always so inspiring to see how different everyone's work turned out. If you enjoyed this class, I'd also appreciate it if you left a review and followed me here on Skillshare. It really helps me continue creating more classes like this. Thanks for painting. See you in the next class.