Negative painting is one of the more beautiful ironies of watercolor: You paint around something instead of painting the object itself, allowing it to be filled in with the blank page or former wash. It’s a game of looking at the spaces instead of the shapes. A leaf on a tree may take on shape not through the green pigment laid onto it, but through the recesses cut around it. A white egret on a dark dusk takes shape not by painting white on the bird, but by the hours spent painting the dusk around it.
You must think ahead and imagine the shape you’re going to save, and position your brushstroke to meet that edge. You want your brushstrokes to be on the right side of the line but not past it, because once you are past it, it’s hard to get back. The whites are going to be harder to fix than if you were painting them in, so that also enforces some planning. As you do more negative painting, you begin to develop a sense of how wet the paper can be, and how much your wash will flow or not, and so negative painting becomes less of a dangerous step into the unknown, and more just a matter of flowing conversation with the paper.
If a subject appears to shine against a dark background, the paper seems to light up from within, giving a painting an inner light not easily produced by the application of opaque white paint. A rose appears soft and airy, snowy limbs seem to snap with frost, and water is reflected without laborious effort, all because the whites are left untainted. The result, a painting that retains a sense of spontaneity, invites an emotional response from a viewer, who may or may not know what techniques have been used to produce that effect.
In addition to these technical advantages, I believe negative painting helps you learn to use the transparent watercolor medium economically and to respect its transparent nature. Instead of struggling to fill up the whole sheet, you learn to paint “with” the watercolor instead of “against” it. Every time you decide not to paint something, you’re learning to trust that a reserved white will have more impact than any color you can apply, or that less is often more. Most of us who use negative painting find our whole way of painting is freer, more economical, and more effective after we learn to paint what’s not there.
In the meditative exercise of painting around instead of painting on, negative painting exposes an underlying secret of watercolor: sometimes the best parts come from what isn’t there, and the best expressions come from what is left behind. The works made through this practice evoke a palpable sense of purpose and control, and encourage the viewer to step into the margins of brush strokes to appreciate the mysterious, autonomous appearance of what can be. For those who wish to escape the realm of the superficial and step into depth and radiance, negative painting provides not only a tool, but a perspective, and ultimately an opportunity to step into watercolor at its most authentic, and most radiant, level.