Many watercolor techniques are different from other mediums. No other technique demonstrates this idea better than negative painting.  In other mediums negative painting is a technique that is sort of a "less-important" technique.  It is something that is mentioned often in passing, but not really explored in depth or not really considered an essential technique.  In watercolor the importance of negative painting cannot be overstated.  It is not only important, but absolutely critical in understanding how to use the medium.

Negative painting simply means painting "around" a shape to define the shape.  A good example is painting a background around a flower to form the shape of the flower.  This seems like a strange idea to many people.  Why not just paint the shape of the flower?  Well because remember; watercolor is transparent.  So if I just paint a background over the whole paper and then try to paint my flower over the top of that background?  Well, the background will show through the flower!  So when you paint the background, you have to "go around" the shape of the flower; leave that shape unpainted.  This is negative painting.

Negative painting can get more complicated than the flower example...way more complicated.  It can be used to create everything from tree canopies to ocean waves, to smaller things like individual leaves, all the way down to the finest details such as blades of grass and twigs.

Negative painting is so essential to watercolor that at Watercolor College we start using it fairly early in the beginner course.  By the end of the Advanced Course it has been used so much that it should be second nature to use it and think in terms of it.

My painting below is a powerful example of how important negative painting is.  The layers of leaves, twigs and debris were all built from layer after layer of negative painting.  Even the tiniest razor-thin twigs were made by "painting around" with negative painting or by using masking fluid to assist with the negative painting.  By the time I painted the final darkest darks, I was painting pockets of negative space no more than a few millimeters in width!