Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Negative Painting

Woodchester Mansion
Negative Painting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Thick grey ground - Acrylic on MDF
16cm x 19cm (6.25" x 7.5")

Lesson 14 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is called Negative Painting.

River Trent Evening
Negative Painting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Thick black on thin white ground - Acrylic on MDF
16cm x 19cm (6.25" x 7.5")

The instructions are to paint six rectangles on MDF with acrylic paint - two white, two black and two grey. For each colour, paint one rectangle with a thin layer of paint and the other with a thick layer stiffened with impasto or texture medium.

Langdale Fells
Negative Painting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Thin black on thick white ground - Acrylic on MDF
16cm x 19cm (6.25" x 7.5")

On the thick white background, paint a notan using a thin transparent layer of black acrylic. On the thin white background, use thick black paint. Similarly, thin white paint on the thick black background and thick white paint on the thin black background. On the grey backgrounds experiment with alternate thin and thick layers of white and black.

From the Mon & Brec
Negative Painting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Thick white on thin black ground - Acrylic on MDF
16cm x 19cm (6.25" x 7.5")

Philip suggests using a palette knife to apply the thick paints. I ended up using a variety of different tools including a painting knife, old plastic loyalty cards and tatty decorating brushes. I embraced the advice from lesson 13 of trying to instil energy into the studies and not to be frightened of making marks in the wrong place.

Old Hill Tree
Negative Painting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Thin white on thick black ground - Acrylic on MDF
16cm x 19cm (6.25" x 7.5")

Negative painting means painting the space around an object rather than painting the object. I painted the black on white images first and couldn't / wouldn't / didn't apply the idea of negative painting to them - these are simply 2 value notans (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape - The Notan). I was more successful with the studies on the black and grey grounds. These felt like negative painting. On the black background, I was conscious of creating the black shapes by painting around them in white. Similarly, on the grey background I was mindful of painting around the grey shapes.

From Gurnard's Head
Negative Painting - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Thin grey ground - Acrylic on MDF
16cm x 19cm (6.25" x 7.5")

All these studies were painted indoors from photographs of our holidays and more local walks.