Today I posted a series of progress shots of a small bird sitting among branches.  This tracing which I drew from one of my photos became the subject of instruction for my upcoming intermediate watercolour class.

Negative painting is a difficult process. It requires patience and I am not a very patient artist.

I began by looking at colours I liked and found other art that incorporated that colour into pleasing and interesting compositions.  

By far recently, phthalo turquoise has been a really wonderful colour to work with. Very staining, but what a set of tones it can produce.  Quinnacridone coral from Daniel Smith is also a lovely colour.  I’m still sitting on the fence with which yellow I enjoy working in. I’ve tried Windsor yellow, cadmium yellow, azo nickel yellow, new gamboge and new gamboge hue, Naples yellow and hansa yellow. I still have difficulty getting it to stay vibrant and not get lost and over taken by a blue or a red or just get consumed by water into the paper and forever lost to the effects I wish to create.

Again, I digress.  This painting is about layering from light to dark and finding patterns and images by painting around the actual subjects.  Not always easy or achieved, I tried to incorporate it into this piece.