Recent Florals and Negative Painting

I’ve been working on my negative painting skills again – in fact I recently led some Open Art sessions on doing so. So I though I’d gather the paintings together here. All these are florals or leaves or forest paintings (“Flora”).

Definition:  “Negative painting, is an intriguing, alternative approach in which the subject is established by painting around the object rather than by painting the object itself. Most painters work in the positive, typically adding one shape on top of another. If, on the other hand, you carve out your shapes, you are taking a subtractive approach: constructing in the negative. So when images such as leaves, trees, flowers or rocks appear in negative paintings they have been created by painting the spaces around and between simple, distinctive shapes (symbols) that represent these things.” — Linda Kemp

You might want to look at the last article I did on negative painting:  NEGATIVE PAINTING FLORAL TRANSFORMATION

“Leaf Tapestry” watercolor by Sharon Giles

“Forest’s Embrace” watercolor by Sharon Giles

“Red Field Daisies” before gouache background added

“Ref Field Daisies” watercolor / gouache by Sharon Giles

“Blue Flower Exercie” watercolor by Sharon Giles

This last painting is a candidate for more negative painting using gouache to add warm accents.