I’ve been borrowing books and DVDs on watercolor painting from the library lately, and got really motivated to practice my watercolor techniques.

I painted the followings after watching the DVD, Painting outside the lines – A positive approach to negative painting by Linda Kemp. You can get the book of the same title on Amazon too.

I’m always intriguied to see negative painting techniques in a painting and have always wanted to learn to do it. Linda makes it seems so easy to follow! She starts by showing us the basic of negative painting, using circles only. This exercise really helps me to understand how negative painting works. She then went on to demonstrate how she works – paint some bold colors as an underpainting, identify shapes using the colors already on it and further develop these shapes by painting around it, then slowly build up the painting layer by layer to achieve the final result. She demonstrated three paintings in the DVD – winter berries, forest, and a landscape scene. I enjoyed watching she paint and how the paintings slowly evolve.

Negative Paintings