Negative Painting Watercolor: Easy Trees Tutorial for Beginners (The Upside Down Method)
If negative painting has ever felt confusing, overwhelming, or impossible to understand… this watercolor tutorial will help it finally click.
In this beginner-friendly watercolor lesson, I’ll show you how to paint layered trees using one of my favorite approaches: painting upside down to simplify the process and help you clearly see the negative shapes.
This simple shift changes everything.
Negative painting is one of the most important watercolor techniques you can learn because it teaches you how to create depth, atmosphere, layers, and beautiful glowing shapes without overworking your painting.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn:
🌲 How to paint trees using negative painting techniques
🌲 How to build depth through layered watercolor washes
🌲 Why turning your paper upside down makes painting easier
🌲 How to simplify shapes instead of getting overwhelmed by detail
🌲 How to gain better control of values, edges, and composition
This video is perfect for beginners, especially if you:
🎨 Feel intimidated by negative painting
🎨 Think watercolor feels too hard or unpredictable
🎨 Struggle with drawing
🎨 Want to loosen up while still creating beautiful results
You do not need perfect drawing skills to create beautiful watercolor paintings. You simply need to understand shapes, values, layering, and how watercolor flows.
So take a deep breath, grab your paints, and paint along with me.
If you’ve ever felt unsure about what to buy or overwhelmed by all the options… then this is for you.
Inside my free mini-course“Supplies I Can’t Live Without!”, I walk you through the exact brushes, paints, paper, and materials I personally use in my own work and classes. And more importantly, why I use them.
Because in watercolor, your supplies shape how the paint moves, blends, and flows. And that directly impacts how confident you feel as you learn.
I’ve carefully curated this list to help you get started right away so you can spend less time guessing, and more time actually painting.
You can explore and shop everything through the links provided inside. These are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.