beginning painting 101 – fiery underpainting portrait
I usually refer to this painting exercise in my classes as the fiery underpainting but the object here is to let the toned canvas work in your painting. The goal is to not cover up the toned canvas so that it shows through in the lights and especially the shadows. This technique was a standard of the old masters and the baroque painters. If you ever have the opportunity to look at one of Rubens paintings in person, you are most likely to see whole areas of the painting that are barely finished and consist of little more than lights thrown onto the toned canvas. This allows you to focus your efforts on the part of the painting which will be the focus point, and to let the shadows remain transparent. It is not necessary to bring every thing in the painting up to the same level of detail.
Since these are class demos, they of course are just loosely painted, and in reality I would avoid spending too much time on these or you will over work them. The point of the lesson is to learn to leave the toned canvas alone in the shadows. This technique works exactly like drawing on toned paper, the point is to let the value and tone of the canvas work for you. Refer to my toned paper article for information on working with toned paper.
I start this project with a toned canvas of burnt sienna in a middle value. I use burnt sienna because when thinned out it becomes like “fire”. Make sure to thin the paint down when you tone the canvas with liquin so that the burnt sienna looks like a thin wash.
Once the canvas is dry (usually good to prepare it the day before) I start my drawing with burnt sienna thinned with turpenoid and some liquin. It is important to get a sense of the drawing but to not overwork it in the shadows. Do not start building up value yet, we are only going to be painting the lights.
Next mix up several values of raw umber with a touch of burnt sienna to warm it up. I usually go ahead and create 5 values of this but you wont need anything darker than a value 7 – 8 since you wont be touching the shadows much. Starting in the shadows, I loosely drag a thin layer of paint into the darkest part of the shadows using my darkest value. Dont cover the entire shadows but leave the paint thin and broken so the toned canvas shows through. This is the beauty of the technique.
Next using your lighter values, work up the lights from the midtones to the highlights. Here you will be working with thicker paint, especially as you approach the highlights. The goal here is to still allow areas of the toned canvas to show through.
This example actually has too much of the toned canvas covered up for my liking, I should have stopped sooner. Since it was a demo for class it is rough but you can still see the technique.
A better example would be this one.
Here you can see much more of the toned canvas showing through in both the lights and the darks. It is a much better example of the technique. Let the color of the toned canvas work for you functioning as the lightest values in the shadows and as the midtone values in the lights, right before the shadow starts.
It is also advisable to work some of the background in early so that you can judge the values in the rest of the painting against the background. I usually use straight burnt umber for the background, letting some of the toned canvas show through.
Have fun!
