I spent most of my time today doing negative painting on the background and foreground of the Jaguar and Tiger painting.  It's a difficult for me to think negatively, since most of the artwork I do is done by painting objects.  However, since I had a background color already established, it only seemed logical to darken the background area and leave leaf and grass forms.  I didn't draw the leaves in, but rather tried to imagine what they would look like by envisioning dark areas in between each leaf.  I also found an area where a very distant lily could be painted on the left side.  The same process was done for the foreground, but here the background was much darker.  It was a very tedious process.  Once I had all the negative painting completed, I realized the leaves were much too bright, so I applied two green washes right over the top of everything darkening the lower portion   which keeps the eye into the painting. 

The weather was pretty grey today, and it was snowing, so I couldn't take the painting outside to capture it on the camera.  It's suppose to continue snowing for the rest of the week, but I will try to get a picture of the completed painting on here as soon as possible.