How do YOU sketch in your drawing before painting?

[Wayne Gaudon]

I don't do detailed drawings as I paint mostly landscapes but I usually run a 9 block grid on my canvas .. I tone my canvas with turp and a trans red oxide or other paint color depending .. I then use a worn out britstle .. short and hard and I dip it in the turp paint mix and then just wipe out my three horizontal and three vertical lines .. I now have enough lines to keep my composition in close proximity to my subject .. (I mostly work from photos but doing plein air you just use the 9 square idea on a view finder .. cardboard cutout with strings works. Once I have my grid in place I block in my major masses using a base color .. ie.. my middle sky color for sky, murky red tree mass, you know .. light here dark trying to keep my values good and my basic big shapes in place. From there I define within the shapes until my trees and all else take the shape and space I want them to.

For still life I like the wipe out method where you lay in a wash of turp and paint and then using a rag you wipe out your shapes leaving lighter values for your lights and the turp/paint as your middle. You then use a little more of the mixture to darken your darks .. it's really fun if you don't mind the turp smell.

[plnelson]

Originally Posted by artbabe21

Gavin--I swear I have not ever heard of this using ink! I have to tell you I have paintings done nearly 25 years ago, that have pencil drawings underneath them that have not been a problem or bled through in any way!

I have never heard of pencil bleeding through oil paint.

To the people who say it bleeds through: by "pencil" do you mean a conventional graphite pencil?

I don't use graphite pencil because I'm worried about the paint adhering to the where the pencil is, since paint doesn't stick to graphite.

I do an initial drawing with with charcoal and then use compressed air to blow off all but the faintest trace of it. I then do an underpainting with thinned paint.