Negative Painting

The next few weeks, I'll be working with a group of watercolorists on negative painting. There's nothing negative about it! Negative painting means painting the space around a subject, generally with a darker or less intense color. The exercise I'm going to use demonstrates deepening space with layers of progressively darker background.

For the first layer, identify what will be the LIGHTEST LIGHTS of the painting.
Here, it's the moon. Paint around the lightest lights with light, not-too-intense color.

Second layer - identify the NEXT layer of lights -- slightly darker because
these will be on the layer that is already painted with the background color.
If you need to draw in the subject to keep from painting over it, that's fine.

Now, paint around the second layer with a slightly darker background,
this time avoiding the LIGHTEST LIGHTS and the NEXT LIGHTEST LIGHTS.

Fourth layer is same as third -- identify the next layer and paint around
that plus the second layer and the first with a dark background.

You could go on painting additional layers, deepening the space almost endlessly.