Negative Space Watercolor Floral Painting

1. Intro Negative Space Watercolor Floral Painting: Hello everyone. This is Jacqueline. Jacqueline, I'm going to be your instructor for this negative space painting tutorial. I have always wanted to learn how to do this and you know what, I struggled with it for a very long time before getting some techniques and tips of my own down. And now I have them. I thought it would pop it up on Skillshare and give you some of those really easy ways that I have come to do this so that you can start developing your own style. Get ready for some negative space painting and you know what? It's going to be so much fun. Now if you don't know what negative space is, negative space is the background or the area that surrounds the subject that you want to have as the area of interest in your painting. The terminology comes from photography. Really, positive space refers to the object that tracks immediate attention. And negative space is the background. We are going to be going back and forth between the positive space and negative space as we paint. And that is all I'm going to say for now until you get on into this class and we start getting to work. 2. Materials and Paint for the class: Welcome everyone. So what you're going to need for this negative space painting course is watercolor. Hope we're going to talk about the watercolor and just a second, because that's going to be really, really specific as to what colors you're going to choose. But you're also going to need some paper. So you can just do your sketch book if you'd like. I recommend 300 GSM or a 140 pound. A 100 percent cotton watercolor paper always works best for me. This is just some Paul Rubens sketchbooks that I really use up a lot. This is like a block, and this is a small sketchbook. I, you'll see me use these very, very often, but you can just use paper. You can even just get like small pieces of scrap paper as long as it's really good quality, I recommend that you use really, really good quality. There's even some like really affordable sketch books out there. This is one that is totally affordable and I usually use it for sampling. It's by Strathmore 400 series and it is a cold press watercolor paper. It is not entirely a 100 percent cotton, so it's not going to give you all the effects that they are. A 100 percent cotton do give. But as you can see, it really does a great job. I mean, the colors are pretty vivid, I would say, you know, so I do a lot of swatching in it. And I still love a 100 percent watercolor paper. But if you compare it, is or de-center pretty good, right? This is a 100 percent cotton. This one is Canson Heritage. So you can see how beautiful and vivid colors are allowed to remain where these papers that are not a 100 percent cotton, they still do a great job and the paper looks really, really well defined. It's got some texture. It's got two sides. One that has one kind of texture and another texture. And the colors do still look really, really bright and nice. Just depends on what you can afford. But you know how Rubens is not a bad way to go because it is very inexpensive. Canson Heritage is another really good one. They have a fine grain and they also have a rough grain that is a little more pricey though. There's also arches, which is also pricey, and Strathmore, which is probably the least expensive. But again, this one is not a 100 percent watercolor or a 100 percent cotton. It's, but it's still a great paper to use. So as far as paper, you're going to need what you can have, what you can afford. You will develop different techniques on a 100 percent cotton versus anything else that you use. Just make sure it's watercolor paper because otherwise you won't get the result from this class. As far as your colors and your brushes, Let's talk about those. Oh, don't forget water. Lots and lots of water is always a good idea. But as far as your brushes and colors, now, I have a thing for brushes. I mean, as you can tell, I have just about every single company and watercolor brush out there. I have my Neptune's, which I absolutely love because they hold a ton of water and they come in everything from really fine detail ones to really, really beautiful squares and flats that I use a lot to keep my, my style loose. They also have dagger brushes. There's a Skoda, which Skoda, it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous brush. This is one of my favorites. It's a flat one bias go to and you just can't go wrong with it. You really can't. Our quills, quills are great to have. I'm going to use a coil actually in this beginning of the watercolor lesson because they're very floppy and I like the way that they just kind of allow you to push the watercolor around. Also, these are like, really nice kinda floppy squirrel. These are synthetics. The Princeton Aqua Elite doesn't hold a ton of water, so it's really good for shaping and details with the squirrel holds a ton of water and they're very loose type of watercolor paints. Paintbrush, squares and flats will help you stay a little more loose. So that's another thing that you might want to consider. In any case, use what you have. You don't have to buy a specific brush for this course. I just happened to collect brushes and I love them and I know everything there is to know about pretty much every watercolor brush out there on the market at this point. Now for your paint, it's really important when you choose paint that you realize that there are certain paint colors that will work really well together, and certain pink colors that will have different maybe undesirable effects. So this is why I always like you to start out any watercolor painting by picking the colors that you're about to use, limiting your palette to less than 12. I would say this is a travel palette that I have, which is 12 basics that I use more often. But for this particular piece, Let's pick three basic colors, right? Three like one yellow, one red or pink, and one blue. Because that's going to be the basics. Red, yellow, and blue will make all the other colors. And then you can have up to two convenient colors. So my convenient colors are usually cobalt, turquoise. Turquoise by CALEA 1843. And viridian is also really fun to have. So I'm this case I'm going to be using the W 536 by Marcelo. Another possibility is brilliant. This is halos are really in, and it's a really, really beautiful color that manufacturers some moody tones as well as some bright tones depending on what you mix it with. So that could be another convenience color that perhaps I'll use in this scenario. And my French ultra is my basic blue that I typically use, my opera rose. This opera is a beautiful color. This one is by Daniel Smith, and it is just such a really bright, pretty colored to use in florals. It mixes out my purples. It makes some really bright oranges. And the whole point of doing this kind of thing is to see what's going to make mud when you mix it together and what won't. So that way when you start layering fallen colors on top of the other colors, you will know the desired effect. And that is so, so important for you remaining the brightness of the colors and also not ending up with crazy browns that you don't want to narrow it. You want your colors to be vivid, bold, and have those layers be able to be not only transparent, but when they start to cut like coincide or commingle on the paper, you don't want, as you layer them over each other, you don't want the shadows to end up colors that you don't need in this piece. So this is just a sample piece. The one that we're going to be painting is incredible and it's a pumping up on the screen as we speak. All right guys. So that's the deal with the colors, the paper, the water, and the brushes. Let's get in there and start to do some work on negative painting. This is going to be so much fun. 3. Getting Started : Loosening up your style: So a big thing in this or any kind of watercolor is just getting started. A lot of people are often intimidated by the pains, intimidated by the pressures in the paper, and you just don't know how to start. Well, the best way to start loosening up your style and really just not getting your head wrapped around it too. I think just being too cautious is just to flick some paint on the paper. So get a quill brush or any kind of brush. It's really like loose and get it really, really wet. Put your favorite color on there and just start smack it and on that paper, You know why? Because it's going to loosen up what you do. Now. You can even do this with a card and spray bottle. You can do this with your fingers, whatever you want. Just put it on paper, leave some white areas and then stand back and see what you have. The important thing is not to have it makes sense. The important thing is for you to get out of your own head and just start creating and letting your juices flow. Because unless you loosen up your style, it's really, really hard to tackle new techniques and a new project. I always find that the most requested thing that people say to me when I share my paintings on Facebook or wherever is how you get your style to be so loose. And you know what, we're going to do that and accomplish that right here. So get ready for that. So once you get some paint on paper, I did this on dry paper. I didn't do it on wet because what I'm what would spread the color. But what I did do is I got my quill brush really nice and damp, and I just started to smear it by rolling the brush. I do this a lot. This is a quill by Neptune. And the thing I love about this particular brush is it holds a lot of water, so it doesn't get really dry. And if you're going to start smearing things around and picking up a little bit of extra color to mix on paper. You definitely want to have the ability to hold a lot more water than usual because of the brush is too dry or it's too wet, it actually is going to work against you. But again, this is the part that we're just kind of going in and putting some really cool colors down. And we're not thinking about what we're going to get. I'm just turning it around and I'm rolling. This is how I establish my background without thinking too much. One of the things that really challenged me learning how to do this and what gotten my way was the, was just the design itself. I was always so confused about where to start. This was my way of starting this negative painting and being able to just capture some really great textures and see through imagination where the painting was gonna take me. So all I'm doing is I'm using some opera rose, some beautiful cad yellow. I'm rolling in a little bit of cerulean and a little bit of what's the other color is French ultra. All great colors that mix together. If you're ever worried about mixing colors together, then just do it on a sample sheet before and see how they go. Because most of the colors that I use and I will include a list of these particular colors in the, in our section here on the tutorial. But these colors really mix well together and you'll notice that they don't quite go to mud. They stay really clear. Now the next thing I'm doing right now is I am starting to shape up what I think should be flowers. And if you notice, I'm not really doing the inside first. I'm doing the outside of some of them. And then I'm going in an establishing, maybe a center in some cases just to make it a little more clear. I highly recommend you do it this way because you will not only get some really interesting pedal work on the outside, but if you feel like you're starting to get a little bit lost, if you just establish the center of the flower and maybe know more details past that, then you'll be able to get your eye back into what you're actually trying to do. So if you notice I'm getting some more color, I'm keeping my brush damp and I'm just going over these dry areas and pushing the paint around. The pink can't be sopping wet because if it's sopping wet, then what's going to happen is you're gonna get puddles and it's going to kind of backwash. I have damp brush with color. And I am just kind of going through and establishing those petals. And now I'm going through and establishing some centers just by pushing a little bit of color from the center and molding it and shaping it out. Now this is where intuition comes. I find that at first I didn't have the ability to really picture many different flowers. But then I started looking like on Pinterest and saving flowers and just kind of starting to commit to memory what some of my favorite flowers looked like at also watch for the position of flowers. So I studied them, you know, like if one's facing you and you can see right into it versus one on its side or, you know, going another direction. I ran into one lady that actually had a bunch of silk flowers in her studio. And at any given moment, she could take a flower out and literally turn it in every direction. Just to get her mind thinking about the three-dimensional views of a flower. I thought that was a really great tip because just by having some flowers in your studio or maybe some sample paintings that you did in your sketch book. You'll get an idea in your mind for what flowers look like from different angles. And that really does help you when you go to do a painting like this. Now I'm not going to say it's going to come to you and come to everyone right away. It just depends on your experience level with flowers. Maybe you arrange them and maybe you've loved them if you have them around your home and you've studied them, if you haven't, you're going to start studying them now though, because at any given moment in these paintings, you can see a lot of different kinds of flowers. And you're going to want to have that committed to memory so that you can intuitively pull out what some look like and you know it, Listen, if your imagination is making up flowers, then make up your own flowers, girlfriend. I mean, you do not have to go by what things really look like because the true artist just goes with their intuitive mind, just what they view it to look like. And that has been in some of my favorite painters and of all time, they've always shown me what their view of the world is through their paintings. So don't worry about it being too much like one thing or too much like another flower. If you have it in your mind that this is the flower and this looks like this. Then show it to us, show it to us through your painting and that's all you really need to know as far as that goes. 4. Establishing a Negative Space Background: So now that we have the basics and I mean, we've got some flowers started. We've got a lot of really nice opera rose and pinks, yellows. We've got the basics. I mean, we definitely have some florals in there. Let's start doing some of the background work. Now we've done some initial background work around some of the flowers. But I'm going to get some green. This is viridian green. And I'm going to start painting in some areas of green with some blues and some beautiful greens now starting with just some petal shapes. Now the reason why I'm doing little leaf petal shapes is because it's a floral design and it's just really something that I feel I want to connect with in the painting. You can do anything you want. I mean, remember, this is your painting. So if you wanted to do just simple brushstrokes or stripes or clouds or whatever it is you want it in the background. You could do palm tree leaves. I mean, whatever, you can start adding that into the background. Now if you noticed, I've kind of cut through a lot of trouble for you. I've already established some of the flowers. Now we're going to have a lot more flowers, of course, in this painting, the one that I'm doing for you, but I just thought establishing a few flowers are first was always the easier way to go for me. Then as I start to put in these other values in the background and these other objects in the background, I will start to see other areas of flowers popping out. I felt like this was really the best way to do it. I've, I've taken lessons where people have drawn in the background. They have tried to leave spaces for certain things and make certain shapes happen and appear. And to tell you the truth, it is painstakingly problematic. I mean, it is so difficult to do layering when you just really don't have an eye for it. So this way, doing it this way has been so much easier. Now, in order to get this to happen, you're going to want to play with the values right now if you notice, I'm mixing it up between a hard edge and a softer edge. Now I'm mainly doing some very, very deep colors like the viridian, leaving a little bit of void space, but kind of going around and adding a little more green over my blue and then letting it dry. Now the reason why I'm not doing this wet on wet is because if it were to puddle, then it would really lose a lot of his brilliance. So if you want brilliant color, try not to work wet on wet too much. Tried to just go over the areas once they are dry. Otherwise, it will kind of sharon the pigment. And depending on the paper, it could be problematic, maybe even giving you some backgrounds. Now anytime I go over an area, I make sure I have an equal amount of color in it and I make sure that I'm not really soaking wet. My brush at this point is just damp. It's not sopping wet for a coil, it's just damp. But I loved the softness that this quill offers. I can push around paint and I can use the point when I went to, but it's just a very, very soft, not stiff brush and I loved the way it leaves his little watermarks. If you notice, see how when I'm just kinda striping the paint on, it leaves this little brushstroke remark. Now that's what I look for when I do some of these paintings because it adds texture to the painting, which gives it that really, really cool relief look without having to do like many, many, many relief layers. And a lot of people have asked me, because they see in my paintings, these legs shear layers and then these deeper layers. And they always are interested in how I achieve that. Well, this is exactly it. I just do it all at once pretty much. Now, the only time I would go back over something is when it was fully dry and it was maybe another color that I added over it, which I'm doing right now. So if you see, I'm adding this green and this blue shade over some pink to define yet another area of which are going to be flowers. And this is some of the really cool stuff that happens because it's going to create another shade where the area is that has the dried paint and then I'm playing a wet paint over it. It's like a glaze. And at the same time, I'm starting to define some more flowers in this area. And that's really, really a cool way to do it. So now I'm taking that pink again and I'm just kind of intuitively shaping out some more really cool flowers. Now I've already got the background in here of a light pink and a little bit of yellow. I've left a lot of white, and now I am inserting some more bold color and some flower shapes on top of that background. So we've got a background in first. And I did leave that shape of the flower if you noticed, but I'm not following the exact shape of the flower. I'm leaving it as a background piece so that you know that there's a flower, but it has a little more texture and dimension to it. And I love doing that as one of the things that I came up with by myself and I really, really love it. Now if you noticed, I just switched and I went with a little bit of a, a stronger brush. This is around by a Skoda. The reason why I'm using this is because it's going to give me the ability to define smaller shapes. And I loved the way it concentrates the color so that I can press petals down onto the paper. And this is just a great petal shape or, you know, it's just around is beautiful. And I've also been able to remove a little color with this. So I would just kinda wipe away some of the water and then I would go over it and just remove a little color. And it's also a great way to add these little details into the centers so that we have even more flour recognizable flower shapes just kind of going around at this point. And I'm establishing some centers using a little bit of my ultra marine French, ultramarine blue. And now I'm going to make some kind of purplish flowers. So this one, what I did is I didn't rinse my brush out after I had the opera rose in it. And then I added some French ultra. And French ultra plus upper rose makes this beautiful violet color, which is perfect for flowers. And that's how I'm getting this really nice tie-dye effect. So the value of knowing your color combinations and what will mix well on paper is really showing up here for me. This is how I get this gorgeous purple and I'm confident that I can lay in layers of these colors and just grab a little scarily and grab a little ultramarine and put it all in together without rinsing out my brush. Because I already knew that the colors mix well together and I already had defined in my mind what I could get as a result of knowing that the certain colors make these other colors. So this is the value of doing those samples in the very, very beginning. All right, How you doing so far? I hope you're doing well. All right, let's go on to the next section, Shelley, and we'll talk more. 5. Adding Layers to your Painting: So now that the paper is dry, I am putting in some additional layers. Now the reason why the paper has to be dry is because if you were to lay purple on top of yellow, then you would get a different color. I wouldn't be as vivid or as bright. And it could possibly do some backwashing. So you want to make sure it's dry in between layers, especially because you can see I'm using a little more water this time and I'm doing some loose petals. So just basically loose petal of a flower in the foreground with laying over the previous one and a little bit of a center. And you could do leaves, you could do more abstract flowers. You can just even do a splash of paint at this point. As long as the back is dry, then you can pretty much layer over it. And this would be at this point about the third layer. Now, a lot of negative painters, they use different variations of color, like some use just really, really super light layers. I prefer to have a little bit more color and I'm not really afraid of those layers getting really dark. At this point. I'm just kind of going over previous flowers and I'm just doing it again intuitively, making just fun for myself. Just making it really fun. Don't get locked into any one design because you want to keep your emotions fluid. You want to be able to just do some different fun things on the paper and get as abstract as you want. Right now I'm using the side of my brush to role in not only some pink, but also some French ultra to make this really pretty purple kind of happen and mix right on the paper. I often do that. I don't always mix my colors in the palette. A lot of times I'll just mix them right on paper with a damp brush and it's so much fun to see that value come out. And then I'll take some of that color and I'll spread it around the painting and other areas which you're seeing right here. Now remember, if you go over something that is already wet, it is going to have a different effect for you than if it were dry. And that's what you're going to see in some of these flowers, like the one I just did, it had a little bit of dampness stolen the flower, so it lost a lot of its shape and became more of an abstract look. If you want that kind of look, then by all means, definitely do it that way. But for the most part, I kind of recommend that you start with dry on dry. Like to putting the paint on dry paper because I don't want you to end up with a big puddle or a big old mess until you learn to control the amount of water in your brush. And that is really, really a key thing to keep in, to keep in mind and keep track of when you're doing this kind of painting. You have too much water. You can really lift colors or anything else. But you know, that brings up something that you see a lot in negative painting. You can actually go over areas even after they're dry with a very firm brush, get it damp, rinse it out and then wipe it on your towel, and then go over that area that you want to remove the color and you're actually creating some more negative space. It's a pretty cool thing to do actually in the painting. And if you like to do it and it's kind of like an area that you want to see that happen or maybe you made it too dark. You want to lighten up and come up with a negative flower design or a negative pedal. You might want to try it in some areas. It's pretty cool. It's actually fun to do. In this next area, I'm adding some brilliant cobalt turquoise, which is one of my favorite colors. But this one does tend to be a little more granulated and a little bit more opaque in some ways. So you want to really be careful when you apply it. Always apply it onto lighter areas and when they're dry, mostly using some cad yellow mixed with the turquoise to get like kind of in-between a yellow green or maybe like a sap green, a very, very light shade of it or just to tint migraine just a bit. And now I'm going to start adding some more of those deeper viridian. And if you noticed, I didn't really rinse my brush out. I went ahead and put the turquoise n and then I laid some cad yellow in and then I went right into my viridian green. And that was so that I could keep the continuity of the shape. A lot of times when you use different shades, you might feel like they become distracting because the colors don't really go together. So a really good way of establishing that is keeping a paint that you know will mix with your next paint on your brush and creating the pink color using the previous paint plus the new paint. The reason why this works is because it carries forward some of the same shading, some of the same undertones. And so you're painting doesn't really end up looking very distracting because you're still in the same color family. You're just adding a new shade to it. So you know what I mean? It's not like you're going warm to cool, warm to cool it. You're kind of just getting something that was created from something else that's already being used. Anyway, I really like doing it that way because I feel like it adds some continuity to my paintings. And it always ties in the colors even though I have a lot of colors and my paintings. But if you noticed, all the colors are really being created by just the same core colors. We've got a yellow and opera pink, a civilian blue, and ultramarine blue, and a viridian green and the turquoise. So those are six colors, yes, but mixed together, they're giving us all of these different shades and they work really, really well together. Not one of them has given me mud. They're all giving me very clean, clear colors. I often do that. I often will use maybe two or three basic shades and maybe one convenience color. So my convenience color in this case is the turquoise. The, the the bright green. I could actually make that shade just by mixing my civilian and my yellow. And so that's why the viridian is a convenience color, but it's not really outside of the family of the colors that I currently have in my palette. That makes a huge difference when it comes to choosing the colors and getting this effect to work out. Otherwise, if you start to see a lot of muddy mess, then you know that you haven't chosen the right colors and they're not really working together well. This is why we always want to do that exercise first, getting to see what the colors actually look like together as they combine on paper. That's huge. I mean, basically you can just take a little bit of all of them, mix them all together, and just start seeing what they are going to turn out to be because it's not going to be differently. You gotta do a painting. It is actually exactly the same, if not worse than your samples. So just keep in mind the careful with the colors and choose ones that work really well together. And then kinda stick with that as long as possible, adding in maybe just one new color at a time as you progress on your painting journey, it just makes it so much easier and you'll have a lot fewer headaches and probably a lot more paintings that you really love. Okay, that's it for our negative space tutorial for this particular floral pattern. I hope you guys enjoyed it and you've got some really great tips. I'm going to be posting some more samples and demos in this class if you'd like to continue learning how to do this negative space painting, including one that I did with palm trees that I think you're really going to enjoy. It's very, very fun. I hope you guys are going to try it out and show me your samples. I'd love to see what you come up with, even if it's just a little sketch book version, don't go crazy. Just be happy and enjoy your painting time. This is a journey and it is completely yours. It is something that you are here to enjoy. Work with the colors that really appeal to you and just try to be intuitive with at all. Now it's your turn. Let's see what you got. And don't forget to share it with me. Thanks for watching everyone.