Under painting critique please!

[Elizabeth Schott]

I bit the bullet, and with the help of William and all of the input contained in the "Tips" & "Palette" threads, I purchased up-to-date oil supplies.

For my first go, I am using one of three reference photos that I used for a commission of a 5 year old in pastels. Your input is greatly appreciated.

This is the reference:

[Elizabeth Schott]

This is the full canvas, 16 x 20. I found it difficult to photograph with out a reflection, is there a trick to this?

[Elizabeth Schott]

I tried to follow Karin's value tips for under paintings and the instructions in Chris' book. I am not using the "glazing" technique, so I wasn't sure if this detail of value was necessary, or if a "sketch" would have been fine. This is the detail:

[Elizabeth Schott]

For some reason these look rougher than when I was painting.

[Karin Wells]

First of all, you have a beautiful photo reference to work from and this should be a lot of fun to paint.

But your underpainting is much too thin. Your paint must be buttery, very thick (think peanut butter, and completely cover the canvas.

The underpainting is your opportunity to clearly establish light, shadow and the halftones, i.e., the smooth areas of transition from light to shadow. This can only be done in thick paint. Save your "painterly" brushwork for the upper layers where it will show to best advantage.

Secondly, your range of values is much too great. No dark should be more than a 50% grey value. Check out my underpainting demo elsewhere on this forum...it is of a BLACK dog and you can see how dark the paint gets. If your underpainting gets too dark, there will be "no place to go" when you begin with the color layers and those dark areas will become "dead."

[Elizabeth Schott]

Karin, thanks for your response. Actually when I started this I had printed out your thread on the values and under painting. Thought I followed it pretty well until the end, where I thought the darks were not popping enough, thus the raw umber is not grayed down.

I thought I was to use the 3 value as the imprimatura plus as part of the figure. I didn

[Karin Wells]

I thought the darks were not popping enough, thus the raw umber is not grayed down.

If you are going to do layer on top of this, save the dark accents for later. If you do not plan to go farther, dark accents are OK here.

...what the drying time should be in between steps?

If you paint in layers, each layer should be dry before you add the next. If you are using the direct method, you can paint wet into wet. Just to confuse you more, you can combine these methods if you wish. But just remember, you cannot glaze onto a wet surface or you will mess it up.

When you want the paint to be "buttery" do I need to add any medium to the oil or just put the paint on thick and smooth?

If you are a patient person you can avoid the medium. If you're like me, you'll want to use something to make it dry overnight, i.e., Liquin, Galkyd Lite, etc. Don't ever use turpentine as a medium. Turpentine is for cleaning your brushes.

[Chris Saper]

Hi, Beth.

Just a note of clarification. I rely on a three-value thumbnail in order to establish a framework for the design and composition. I think paintings work better with fewer rather than more values. Sometimes the finished work sticks very close to three values, but more frequently five, sometimes more. I know from past experience, when I see I have a surface that's visually weak, it's usually because my values have gotten out of control.

Also, my terre verte drawing is not a true underpainting, it's really just a monochromatic sketch. I am not a glaze painter and have no experience with the type of technique used by Karin, Michael Georges, and others.

Good luck,

[Elizabeth Schott]

That makes sense Chris, I was afraid I was doing more than necessary. I did the 3 values as a pencil sketch, then went by Karin

[Elizabeth Schott]

This is a close up of the hand held shot.