Painting Negative Space

Oh my...recently I saw a really cool video from The Pigeon Letters - Peggy Dean where she painted the negative space instead of an image.  It was very inspiring and despite never having tried it before I wanted to give it a shot.  It's way harder that I thought it would be.  I made 2 so far and I like the first one the best (orange). 


I did far better on my first attempt because I actually drew out what I wanted it to look like on paper before I began.  The pink version was just painting stuff...no real plan to go by.  I often have a war  going on between the left brain/ right brain. One side of my brain is very organized and I like to have structure - a plan - a guide if you will but then the art side wants to be free and just do whatever. It makes it difficult to actually produce what I see in my head.  This is one exercise I need to continue with so I can mesh both into one.


I started off with the yellow...


And added the pink. 


You can see some of my ideas didn't quite work out...the upper R flower was supposed to be spikey but my brush was way too wet, I ran the flower in the upper L a little too close to the edge so I had to smoosh it up a bit.  I do however like how my tulip and a couple of the leaves turned out.

Now see how a pro does it....