Wheelbarrows and whites

When I posted this wheelbarrow painting on Facebook yesterday, someone asked me where I learned to do negative painting. It took me a minute to think about it because I didn’t really think of this as a negative painting. But of course it is, because of all the white areas. And the answer to the question: I learned to save the whites of a watercolour many years ago when I first studied with Edgar A. Whitney. We used value sketches and careful planning to figure out where the lightest areas of a painting would be, and to this day, I avoid the use of masking fluid. I try to save the large white shapes, and if I need some small highlights I use dots or lines of white watercolour as well as scraping with a blade to get the whites back.

The process for this one was:

1: A careful drawing. I knew I wanted to keep a layer of snow on the upper surfaces on the wheelbarrows so a good pencil drawing was key.

2: Careful brushstokes on the painted surfaces, so as not to cover the white areas that I wanted to save.

3. A light wash of very diluted Indanthrone Blue to tone some of the snow areas in shadow and contrast them with the brightest whites.

4: Lots of scraping with a mat knife to get the whites back in the grasses.