Art Lesson 33, Part 3
In this lesson, you will discover How to Make an Underpainting in Colors
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How to Make an Underpainting in Colors
We are going to proceed with a Color Underpainting over an Imprimatura, it might be done over an Underdrawing or without any Underdrawing at all. Here, we have just a few guidelines over an Imprimatura.
We start as we already did many times – by outlining the facial features in Venetian Red without adding any Medium. We use a small round brush for it and frugally apply the paint that should thinly cover the canvas.
For the larger areas, we use bigger hog brushes in the Dry Brush method – with a tiny amount of paint on the brush, we vigorously rub it into the canvas. The Dry Brush creates a characteristic effect which is not achievable by any other methods.
Our sketch is done, guidelines are on places, and we are ready to introduce other colors into the Underpainting and apply them more densely.
We start with mixing the midtone of the skin color – it should be darker than the lightened areas of the face and lighter than the shadow areas.
As always in our exercises, we use the Titian Palette colors – we use White, Red and Yellow – try it on the canvas. There, you can better decide whether you have reached the tone and color you want or you if should add more colors. So, we added more Yellow and Red and got what we wanted.
We block in the face in a midtone color, leaving the outlined features of the face untouched.
Then we block in the background with the Blue-Black mix. After that, we can lay down the shades using the same Blue-Black mix. In this case, we apply it very thinly. In some places, we blend the shades’ color with the lower midtone.
The only thing that distinguishes this Underpainting from the previous two-session example is the way we do the Color Underpainting. It is just simple blocking in with the color masses. After setting up this rough Color Underpainting, we will paint the rest in one go, wet-on-wet. For that, watch our next Video Lesson.