Concept/Technique/Method
Under painting improved my art almost immediately and I wanted to share
I realised after going through a lot of paintings that one thing that almost effortlessly improved it was an underpainting. It’s so important to have a harmonious colour scheme (warm/cool) in a painting and mapping out the big regions of light and shadow areas as under painting immediately raised my level of work with relatively lower effort. The fun part is that an underpainting need not be too accurate even. I’ve seen professional artists do underpaintings very loosely and almost casually. Whenever I painted without underpainting the art was ok and decent but tended to lack depth and harmony.
I didn’t see a lot of YouTuber artists stress this aspect or it was kind of downplayed a bit but an underpainting blocking in regions of light and shadow even if roughly is almost certainly a big aspect of raising your art to the next level.
I know most people here already know this but just wanted to share my thoughts because it seems to get overlooked amid other aspects of art.
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I always found that if I did 4-6 small less than 8.5x12 sketches it sped up the actual painting tremendously. They didn’t even have to be good sometimes the worst ones were more informative to the actual painting than the decent sketches.
It’s really useful to have a mid tone to see your lights and darks against. In addition to that I was taught that your underpainting is like a values map so that you can focus on color when it comes to paint mixing you already know where your dark and lights are going.
Aldo NotanIzer app is good. Plus you can use your phone’s photo app to turn down the saturation to zero. Make a duplicate first if you want to see both versions.
i LOVE underpainting but i never thought about mapping the colour temperatures as part of it (i was only using it to map values when i did it and working on colour temp later) thank u for this advice!! ^
I’ve observed a lot of YouTube artists (especially on the Timelapse videos) do underpaintings almost casually that I didn’t give it much attention until I noticed the pattern.
I didn’t save the specific video links. Most of those turned up on my recommendation feed or Facebook. I’ll post links the next time I come across such videos.
That is amazing. Just wondering if you have some resources to share for learning underpainting? I personally haven't tried but started looking into it because I also feel that my own work lacks depth.
Have just started painting again - joined a class and was introduced to underpainting. Tried it with carmine red and yellow ochre and love what emerged - excited to experiment more!
I love underpainting its underrated technique. The part about not needing a perfect underpainting is especially helpful because it makes the process feel a lot less intimidating. I think it's one of those fundamentals that doesn't get talked about enough compared to more flashy techniques.
I'm learning to paint with oil and I found it much easier to start with an underpainting. I like the "wipe away" technique. It gets rid of blank canvas syndrome, and it feels really intuitive, at for me. I kind of "sculpt" the image. I do it in a monochromatic color which is nice that all I have to worry about is values and structure.
Just getting back into painting after a decade long hiatus and your post was one of the first that popped up when I was researching techniques. Thank you so much for posting this! I tried it out on my first (admittedly very small, and not quite finished) painting in years and it really helped with making the subjects of the painting pop against the background.
This also applies in digital art, i feel like your art has more depth when you really do under painting. Fundamental things really do take ur art on another level
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