Susie Short's details for painting garden flowers close -up with watercolor

Positive and Negative Flower Shapes -- Close-up Garden Details

Page 2 Positive and Negative Flower Shapes

Page 3 Positive and Negative Flower Shapes

Page 4 Positive and Negative Flower Shapes

Page 5 Positive and Negative Flower Shapes

1. It's not necessary to wet the whole page when starting to paint your flowers, just wet a workable section. The paper should be damp not shiny wet.

2. From a round brush drop or "charge" the area with color.

3. When the color is dropped onto damp paper the edges are soft or blended. These sharp edges you see indicate where the paper was dry not damp. Some of both is good. This works really well for indicating white flowers. just paint around the shapes.
You could draw them in first but the pencil lines are hard to erase after the water and paint cover the pencil lines.

4. and 5. When dry, pencil in the shapes of the flowers indicated by the colors. Larger color shapes can be made into more that one flower. I also added white flowers at the top to paint later.

Negative painting is a process of applying paint to the area around or behind the object you are wanting to depict. Since the white of the paper showing through the transparent colors is the way we paint light colors, in order of the make these light colors stand out you must paint the negative space next to them. Keep in mind that even though it is negative to one shape it could be another flower that is a positive shape.

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With the pencil line as a guide, on DRY paper, paint close to the pencil line using a brush with a good point. Keep in mind other neighboring flowers that may be bordering this same negative space.

7. Next, with a damp brush using clear water, I wet the paper next to the color so the color bleed or blends into the dampend area which softers the edge of the green color. If I have too much water in my brush it will run into the green color instead of the green running into it.

6. This is an example of how to start painting a negative space around one of our flowers.

(I will be using a couple of #8 round synthetic brushes. One with color and one with clear water to use for blending.)

8. and 9. Extend the clear water damp brush blending out away from the green paint to keep the newly painted negative space light in color. After this dries you can paint sometning else in this area if you want to.

10. Before it dries you can also drop additional color into this damp area. Be careful not to add more wetness just color.

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11. Yellow added to the damp area. Using the blue from the neighboring flower blue paint starts the negative painting at the top edge of the pink flower and the lower petal of the yellow flower.

12. Using the clear water blending brush, dampen the area. It doesn't hurt to allow the paint to overlay the underpainting. This is called glazing, when one layer of color is applied over another.

13. The edge is there for the lighter pink flower but the blue is blended into clear water over the blue one.

14. Now, lets add a positive shape into the mix. Be sure the area is dry, then add the color on top of the flower instead of behind it. Again, blend it with the damp brush to keep the edge soft INSIDE the the flower. Using the damp brush to model on move your paint works well with the light colors.

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15. Note the positive shape on the bottom of the pink flower and the negative edge at the top.

16. Positive Shape

17. Negative Area

18. Green negative space

19. Blending the green and
extending the negative area

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20. More negative green spaces are shown above.
I used green so they could be easily identified. Other colors could have also been used.

21. Another purple positive shape is added.

22. Here's a closer look at the shapes and colors of a portion of this flower patch. Some of the pencil lines have been erased to show the shapes that still need work.
Look for the positives and negatives and how they can be used together in the same flowers to create depth and contour. The variety and interest this adds will create a more realistic look.

23. Almost complete!
Just a few more touches and it's done.

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Hint: Controling the amount of water in the mix and in your brush is important.

Notice the white irises at the top.See how they stand out even though the green behind them is pale in value.