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Author: Michael_Georges, Contributing Editor
| The Underpainting
Thus far, you have created your drawing and established a baseline for your underpainting and mixed your verdaccio values. Now it is time to apply the verdaccio. Your goal should be to refine the values you set up in your drawing and tighten up the image significantly over the charcoal. You may want to use your favorite oil painting medium to get the paint to your preferred consistency and brushability. If you used Flake White in your verdaccio, it should dry overnight allowing you to work over passages the next day. If your values tend to sink in a bit, you can use a good retouch varnish at the start of the day to bring the values up. You proceed with the underpainting by simply matching the values that you see in charcoal - if you rendered a cheek in value 7 in charcoal, then you simply paint over that cheek with value 7 verdaccio. Again, you do the underpainting to as fine a detail as you can. The reason for this is that in some passages of the painting your underpainting will actually serve to define the form as you will be glazing that area and the underpainting will show through to define the detail in the final painting. This is the verdaccio underpainting of the Chase & Peyton commission. You will notice that it is more refined over the charcoal and somewhat softer. |
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| More Verdaccio Examples
Here are several more examples of verdaccio underpaintings I have completed. |
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| Color
I am not going to get to much into painting in color as this article is about underpainting. I will remind you that just as your charcoal serves as your map to your verdaccio underpainting, so your underpainting should serve as your map to the color stage. Underpainting in monochrome is all about value, the color stage is all about chromatic value - the values of the colors you are using - and matching the chromatic value of the color you are applying to the monochrome value of the passage below it. A value 7 undertone in the cheek, gets a value 7 flesh tone painted over it. A word about glazing. Glaze only with transparent or semi-transparent colors over passages that have limited color variance. A glaze is like a thin pane of colored glass and your underpainting detail will show through. Passages including the fur, hat, and the velvet sleeves of my reproduction painting of Thomas More shown below are an example of the underpainting showing through a glaze to define the detail. However, his flesh, the table, and the curtain behind him were painted opaquely. This method is not about glazing only, you have to use the technique that is appropriate for the passage. It can be complex and you will have to develop you own feel for it over time. Here are some examples of painting color over a monochrome underpainting starting with my Thomas More reproduction, and continuing with an in-progress shot of my Cupidon reproduction and finishing with the completed commission of Chase & Peyton. |
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