How to Paint Watercolor Opposites: Powerful Tools for Visual Interest

One of our most powerful tools in watercolor painting is using opposites. 

Opposites bring visual interest, create beauty, and evoke feeling. And there are countless ways that you can use them in your painting. Think about your options - you have light and dark, warm and cool, big and small, hard and soft edges ect.

Each painting will call for a different set of opposites to achieve your vision, so it is important that you assess which are most important in your scene. 

In today’s video, we look at some of my paintings and I talk about what opposites I am using in each of the scenes. 

I show examples of the following ways you can create contrast in your paintings:

• Scale 
• Grouping 
• Color temperature 
• Light and dark 
• Hard and soft edges

When you think about how you want to use opposites, you want to be strategic. Don't make the opposites the focus of your painting, but use them to bring interest to certain areas of your painting.

Just as in everything in watercolor, don't overdo this. Just use this as another tool that you have to create beauty and interest - a little bit of visual poetry in your paintings.

Until next time!

-Matt