I lay in the darker sky and background which begins to define the shape of the golden leaves. I am careful to leave the trunk area white, so I can glaze over it later.

This is an example of using the negative painting process to paint a sunny fall Cottonwood tree in Zion National Park. On top of my light pencil sketch I lay in very loose washes of color.

The finished painting. Can you identify all the places in this painting where I used negative painting to create positive and negative shapes?

In this close-up you can see how I use bluish pigment to build the cast shadows on the trunk, which gives them shape and form. Notice how three-dimensional my branches are becoming.

Successive glazes with darker pigments form the darker branches and starts to shape the edges of the trunk.