Negative Space Painting Watercolor Tips & Techniques

Negative space painting is a fairly simple concept, but not so easy to explain.  Instead of first painting the main subjects of a composition, the areas of interest, like a tree, house or person for instance, you paint in the areas, or space, around these objects.  The area or space around the main objects in a composition is known as “Negative Space”.  The main subjects, like the tree, house or person, are the positive spaces.

By painting in this negative space first, you reveal the intended positive space, without actually painting it.  There is no right or wrong way to paint here, it is just two different ways of achieving the same goal.  So don’t let the words positive and negative fool you into thinking that one is bad and one is good.

Like I said in the beginning, it is not that easy to explain.  This is why I have included a variety of lessons and examples below that I found online.  I have included videos, articles and step by step demonstrations that will hopefully make this concept a bit easier to understand and to put into practice in your own artwork.

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