Underpainting

[Karin Wells]

I am often asked about underpainting - a technique that I use. I know that all of this is easier said than done, but here is classic underpainting in a nutshell.

The purpose of underpainting is to resolve the drawing, composition and value of a painting before going into color. Remember that oil paint is mostly translucent and an underpainting will show through into the top layers of paint. There are many ways to do an underpainting, and here is one of them.

In the small unfinished painting I did below (a copy after Ingres) you can see a "raw" underpainting without any of the top layers of color added. This particular underpainting is done with raw umber and titanium white. The overall color you see is a final coat of raw umber added as a glaze to "warm it up." Making an underpainting is very similar to a detailed charcoal drawing - only with a brush and paint.

When an underpainting is completely dry, thin glazes of translucent color are added...sort of like coloring a photograph. The color of light (something that often approximates Naples yellow) is then painted more thickly into the wet glazes and is left to dry.

Layer after layer, this process is gently repeated...until the painting is "done." In the end, areas of light will be built up to be very thick and opaque, and shadows are left to be very thin and transparent with the underpainting showing through.

Those beautiful cool halftones (where light and shadow meet) are created by the underpainting showing through the upper layers of scumbled paint.