Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Negative Thinking

I've been thinking negatively for awhile.

In my paintings, that is. (OK. Occasionally in my mental musings about my art, the weather, and annoying commercials where children are portrayed as being so much wiser than their clueless parents, but all in all, nothing serious.)

I had been getting to a slightly (VERY slightly) complacent stage in my painting, so I decided to challenge myself with working on a weakness of mine: negative painting - which is painting the space around objects rather than the objects themselves. My brain just DOES NOT GET IT. I get it intellectually but not in any measure of decent practicality. Oh, I have no problem when the shapes are simple or geometric, but when they are organic and complex...blah!!

Here is an example, which is an example of negative and positive painting: (the first picture shows a wash of color - then I used that wash to paint around the shapes of trees for the second picture. I also added some actual limbs, which is positive painting)















I have a pile of failures to show for it, but I won't burden you with them.

On a different note, I have decided to take on the challenge of a fellow artist to earn my "Artistic License" by creating a sketch a day for 75 days. I loved her whimsy and decided to go for it. After all, I have a beautiful journal that has been calling me.


Have a wonderful Wednesday!

4 comments:

  1. You should not feel bad. I don't know which one is negative and which one is positive.

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  2. Norm, I added more explanation about the example I gave. I realized by your comment that I was a little confusing :)

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  3. I've been sketching daily, too! What artist suggested the challenge?

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  4. Kate: Brenda Swenson. I have her blog link on this page if you would like to see her beautiful work. She is very adept at negative painting!

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