Improve Your Watercolor Paintings With This Simple Watercolor Technique【 Negative Painting 】

Hey guys. In today's video, I wanted to show you a fun and easy watercolor technique that can help you taking your artwork to the next level. Don't forget to make sure your notifications are turned on by clicking on the bell and by adjusting the settings. And for a chance to get a shout out and to win arts and crafts supplies in my ongoing giveaway, comment down below, hashtag Mockification Squad in the first 24 hours. This technique is called negative painting. It means you create the subject by painting around it rather than by painting the object itself. Usually you would paint different layers on top of each other or next to each other, but the negative painting gives you even more options to make your artwork more interesting by adding more depth. To show you guys the technique, we are going to paint simple leaves first. For this painting, I'm going to use a lemon yellow and cerulean blue to create a cool green. By using the negative painting technique, you want to build up the intensity and the darkness one layer at a time. So the first step is apply a thin layer of water all over the paper and start adding different shades of blue, green, and yellow while keeping the colors pretty light. Here I added different green and blue shades to one corner and yellow and green shades to the other to create a nice green effect. Remember that watercolors look lighter once they're dry, so make sure you don't make the shades too light when you apply the wet paint. Let the first layer of paint dry and then we can go ahead and create the second layer. The second step is creating the actual shapes and the objects starting with the lightest shade first. If you want, you can use a pencil or a watercolor pencil to lightly outline the shape you want to paint. In this case, you want to draw leaves. Next, instead of coloring the shape, you want to paint around it. For this step, use the same shades that you used for the first layer, just this time make them slightly darker by adding more paint than water to the mixture. Carefully paint along the guidelines and cover the rest of the page with a darker shade of color as well. Once this layer is dry, repeat the steps. Create a few outlines of the object you want to paint and then color the entire page but the object itself. The key here is to make the colors darker and darker each layer to create depth. It might look weird right now but just give it more time and a few more layers because then it will make more sense. Keep adding leaves one layer at a time and at some point, you might not even need any guidelines. Since you already have so much space covered, it's a little bit easier to see what else you can add. So you can simply use a really dark shade of green by mixing blue and yellow with just a tiny amount of water and outline a few more leaves and branches. And to make it super dark, you can also add a little bit of black watercolor paint into the mixture. From here, we can adjust a few areas and make the painting even more interesting. I added another layer of yellow paint on top of the lightest leaves to make them look a little bit warmer and to make them stand out a little bit less. To create the shadows, I looked for leaves that are slightly covered by the leaf above it, applied a little bit of water on top and then added a little bit of dark green watercolor right along the edge of the leaf above and then blended it out towards the area that gets more light. Once everything is dry, you can add even more details like texture and a few thin lines on top of the leaves. And this is how it looks. I just wanted to show you some basic shapes that you can already make look a lot more interesting with this method. Now you can use the knowledge and implement it into your artwork. For my second painting, for example, I created something similar but added a few oranges into the composition. I think this watercolor technique makes the painting not only look more interesting but it's also super relaxing. It takes some practice because you kind of have to think backwards and plan it out a little bit but once you get the hang of it, you can take your art to the next level. Also, don't forget that it takes time for the painting to come together. It might look weird and like nothing in the beginning but it's only part of the process. So don't get discouraged. Adjust more and more details until you are happy with the result and make your imagination come to life. And these were the two paintings I created with the same technique. I really hope you like it. A huge shout out to Arts of Me. Thank you so much for your support. I really hope you like this video. If you did, be sure to give this video a thumbs up to support this channel and if you're new here, don't forget to subscribe and to click on the bell to get notified when I upload a new video every Saturday. Thank you so much for watching, guys. Have a wonderful day and I will see you soon. Bye.