Painting Negative Space

Some painters (especially beginners) design their artworks thinking only of the objects they are portraying, but there is another element that must be considered. And that is the painting's negative space. Those spaces between the objects being painted are every bit as important as the objects themselves. Because these negative areas have boundaries, they also function as shapes in the total pictorial structure.

A good painting must function as a whole, with every shape, positive and negative, contributing to the total picture. 

I love "painting negatively" and here's a little study that is 90% negative shapes:

With a big wet brush, I scrubbed in a mixture of ultramarine blue, cad red, yellow ochre, and sap green. There are basically three different values, depending on the amount of thinner I mixed with the pigment.

A few more swipes with the brush to give a texture like evergreens and I start to paint negatively. White is the only other color I add to those I have used and with the same big brush (the canvas is only 9" x 12" so a #6 Flat is large in comparison) I begin to pick out some lighter areas in between the tree trunks. This also establishes the edge of the hill in the background.

Adding more white (but still far from pure white) I continue to break up the areas of color and refine shapes by painting around those shapes. The snow on the ground emerges at this stage.

Deep Forest Snow    9" x 12"

Final details are added with the lightest colors. No pure white was used, though, and the lightest areas have a little cad yellow added to warm it up. The only positive shapes added after the initial lay in of dark color are a few branches and twigs added to suggest a tangled forest. All other shapes I painted are negative shapes.

This is a great exercise to open up your eyes so that you see more when you look at a scene. Don't just look at the tree. Look at the spaces around the tree, the shapes between the twigs, the light shining between the leaves. Try it, it works!