Jim O'Neil's photos with the keyword: negative

alfuso asked, about the preceding picture (blue fish), and presenting a negative image; "how does it work?" Well…. here's a real simple example. I while looking at the sketch following this, did a real quick sketch on red paper using white oil pastels. So! The white becomes black. The red becomes green. Then using photoshop or and other digital image manipulator (I use Graphic Convertor) one can simply invert the colors in the picture, -which does exactly the same the same thing as we used to do in the darkroom when we'd print a color picture from a color negative. Each original color becomes it's complement when printed. Wikipedia gives a quick, concise, explanation of complementary colors.

I started this as a 'four seasons' watercolor. planning to, using only a red/yellow/blue palette and mixing my colors on the paper, run transitions from winter blues through vibrant spring greens, through mature summer greens in to autumn's yellows, reds and oranges but but but… After putting down the first few strokes I got to thinking about how the complementary colors would look against black so… I abandoned my seasonal theme and instead laid down my strokes with the intent of digitally reversing the colors when I finished. So so so… here's the result. Watercolors (red/yellow/blue palette) on Canson's XL recycled Bristol paper, 11 by 14 inches and the colors digitally inverted or reversed.