How to Paint a Light Underpainting in Oil

Okay, so I'm going to start, and let's discuss what we're going to do today. So, we're going to be working on a very special kind of underpainting that was very common in the technique of the old masters. Regular underpainting is when I use a dark color to map out my whole design, but as you can see and I hope you can see, you have eyes on my painting, what's going on here is that my dark shapes are already mapped out with charcoal. So, since they're mapped out with charcoal with a drawing, I don't really need to go at it with a dark paint again and literally repeat what I've already done. That's redundant and unnecessary and I see no reason to do that. However, what's not yet expressed in this design is relationships between the light elements. You see, all the light areas of my design are not not yet described because when I was working with charcoal, there wasn't really an opportunity to get all those things to start to work. So, what I'm going to be working with is a kind of reverse underpainting. Instead of working with the darks, I'm going to be working with the lights. I covered this entire surface with a layer of paint that I mixed from burnt umber and burnt sienna so that it arrives at a kind of middle value and from that middle value, I can see the darks very clearly and I'm going to be able to see the lights. Now, the benefit of working with a light underpainting has even more to do, no, has more to offer us than a regular dark underpainting. Why is that? It's because the light areas, the light pigments, white is a lot more viscous and allows us to start building up our texture even in this early stage of the painting. So, I'm going to be able to at least here, where I'm recognizing in the Rembrandt image that he's putting significant amounts of paint down it starts to look juicy, it starts to look textured, I'm going to at least hope to arrive at some kind of paint texture that's similar to that so that this functions not only as a value map for later, but also as a texture foundation. Alright, so if you find my palette over here where I'm pointing to, you're going to notice that I have white, raw umber, burnt umber and burnt sienna. And then I have this mixture under here which I made which is just white plus raw umber. I put the burnt umber and the burnt sienna over here because I might need them, could be that I'm not going to touch them all day but they're there just in case. The reason I'm not going to use pure white is because, it's very simple, pure white is too light to express anything that's going on here. I don't really see the need to go as light as pure white so I just mixed some raw umber into it to make it a little bit darker and what you see here in the cup is my solvent of choice which is Gamsol. It's a very safe solvent it doesn't have any odor to it which makes it perfect for working in an enclosed space. Alright? So, let's start and then we're going to read some questions. So the first thing I want to do, again, is address what's going on here in the lights. Okay? So let's get that going. So, some solvent and some light pigment. We're not going to start with something bombastic, we're just going to give a little bit of a hint. Let's start recording over here. Alright, and I hope you have the reference image in front of you, that's really going to help you understand where I'm going with this. So, notice, very very very thin for now just kind of finding my way, making sure that I'm very sensitive to the brush marks that Rembrandt is making. Because I want to start making that texture part of my piece as well. And you're noticing how this very minor move that I've made is already popping up. The reason for that is because we're working on a mid-tone surface so any move that we make with a white color with a light color is going to be very very significant. So what we did there is a little too light I'm going to use my left hand to hold a rag rag is very important in this stage of the process because that's how we're going to modify the amount of paint that's on our brush. And so if this happens and we need to make it a little bit less intense, just go at it with the solvent and neutralize it. And what I'm noticing here is I'm working on this gessoed panel, which is a lot less absorbent than what I usually work on, the kind of papers that I brought here with me. And since this is less absorbent this means any kind of amount of solvent that I'm putting on my surface is having a huge impact because it doesn't get absorbed by my canvas and that means I'm going to be using much less solvent than I expected to use which is always something you want to be sensitive to because every surface behaves differently. So if you're assuming that you're going to be working on something that behaves like paper and then it behaves more like wood, if you don't adjust your technique you're going to be in trouble. So right now I'm making an adjustment if this was paper I'd constantly be dipping my brush again and again into the solvent, but since this paper this panel is very non-absorbent I'm not going to be needing any solvent almost at all because it's so slippery already that it's going to be unnecessary. Alright, I think we can read some questions while I work that would be good. Are there any? There was just one of Stefan that said that he's interested in color choice, mixing, and how the whole part plays out of the palette. Now there's more people joining so maybe more questions. Well Steven, your question about color choice Stefan the question about color choice is less relevant to the underpainting that I'm doing right now because I'm not really using any color unless you mean the kind of colors that I chose to mix into my white, in which case I was just choosing pigments that are very very muted so that I don't get anything too colorful. The reason for that is I want to keep my underpainting relatively gray because as I work with the next layers on my painting it's going to be very very easy to increase the saturation of my colors but it's going to be pretty difficult to go back to something neutral. So I always prefer to start neutral and gradually build up towards colorful than the other way around because if you start your painting with something too saturated then it's just an eyesore all the way through. It's just the whole thing is like bright bright bright and screaming in your face and you have to deal with so much noise and I don't like that and the old masters didn't like that. However if you start with something that's very gray, to gradually glaze it and introduce the colors in the later stages is very very easy so it's a popular choice and I recommend it. Working from gray to high chroma is more natural to this medium. Mireya asked the panel you currently have has been done with raw umber and the drawing done in charcoal? So the drawing was done in charcoal and the panel was not done with raw umber. It was actually done with a mix of burnt umber and burnt sienna. Raw umber leans a little bit more towards a yellowish green and burnt umber is a variation of the same pigment but it leans more towards a warm orange color. So what you're seeing here, this warm orange is very characteristic of burnt umber and I made it a little more saturated by introducing a bit of burnt sienna into it. And Stefania also asked from the same topic if you can go over the step that you followed to prepare the canvas. Yes, so this canvas, it's not a canvas it's a panel it arrived from the manufacturer already gessoed so I didn't have to do that. It was already done for me and what I did later is I drew onto it with charcoal, a combination of willow charcoal which is my favorite and some synthetic charcoal for the details that the willow charcoal was unable to express. I started with willow charcoal to get the general shapes in there and then with the synthetic charcoal which is the pencil charcoal I got the more delicate details in there. And then after I was satisfied with my drawing I applied fixative so that the drawing wouldn't get erased when I put down the imprimatura on top of it. Imprimatura is the name that we give the general color that we apply to the surface and if you put enough fixative then your drawing is going to survive this. What I had to do, well what I didn't have to do but what I ended up doing is I think I put a little bit too much fixative which sealed my surface a little too much which is why I'm having this experience that I said before of everything being very very sealed, very very slippery and not allowing me to use a lot of solvent this is a result of the fact that I probably used too many layers of fixative and now this surface is very very non-absorbent. So it's a matter of trial and error and even somebody like me who's been painting for many years can get wrong the degree of fixative that you have to put. But even if you put too much it's not such a big deal as long as you know how to adjust your technique to counteract the fact that now my surface is very very sealed. And as you guys can see what's happening now is this thing is really starting to pop and I didn't do anything to touch the darks. The darks are totally just staying what they were with the charcoal which is a very nice experience because all I need to do basically is work on the stuff that I haven't been able to work on with the charcoal and the charcoal still does a really good job at holding the dark areas together. So, so far everything's working as planned. Let's hope it continues to do so. So the fixative definitely should not be glossy. Yeah, matte fixative is better. The kind of fixative that I use is the workable fixative but I don't think that's a must. I think many kinds of fixative can work. The reason I use the workable one is that it has the tendency to dry fastest and doesn't leave this sticky residue which I absolutely cannot stand. So anything that isn't sticky would work well. I suggest trying it on a piece of paper or something before you do it on your favorite oil painting. Marta asks how long will this layer need to dry or will you paint into it? That's a very, very good question. So this layer is going to dry very, very fast for two reasons. One is the fact that I'm using solvent and whenever you use solvent actually there's three reasons. Whenever you use solvent it makes your painting dry much faster and this is unlike when you're using medium because if I were using medium here it would be a huge mistake because mediums make your layers dry much slower so if I was using like linseed oil or something like that, that would be a death blow to my process. But since I'm using Gamsol, that's going to aid the paint in drying faster. Second reason why it's going to dry faster is I mix my white with raw umber and raw umber is a very fast drying pigment which is part of its benefits. So if I just worked straight on with titanium white, titanium white is a notoriously slow drying pigment which is super annoying and it could have taken me days for this to dry but the raw umber really helps it dry faster and then the third reason is I'm not even working with titanium white because again, titanium white dries very slowly and I don't like that. I'm working with flake white and flake white is made out of lead so anybody here who is not a clean painter and that at the end of the day finds that they have paint on their hands I strongly advise against using anything with lead because as everybody here knows lead is a very unhealthy substance and so it's only recommended for painters who get no paint on themselves whatsoever but if you arrive at that point when you're managing to work clean then lead white has many advantages. One of them is the fact that it's a fast drying white Stefania said I struggle with the drying time of oil I can only paint in a small room with no proper ventilation Do you think it is safe to use Gamsol and Liquin? Yes, I do Both of them are relatively safe substances. I've worked with Gamsol in industrial quantities when I worked as a print shop technician. We were using Gamsol for all of our print shop needs. Our print shop was in a basement with pretty poor ventilation and Gamsol was our ally, our friend so definitely. And Liquin for sure. It has no fumes I have Liquin right here It's not on my table but it's right here and I love Liquin It's a great material and it's going to really help you for sure And as you notice this thing is really behaving nicely ever since I stopped using solvent. It's a very common convention too in whatever layer you're working on to start more wet than you finish So I started by putting a general wash of light color on this whole thing and then when I'm painting into it, I'm painting with no solvent at all and it just kind of melts into each other in a very pleasant way. If I were to try to add more solvent into this now, it would be complete chaos and everything would be leaking into each other. So big mess So it's always advised to start with your more liquidy layer and then paint into that liquidy layer with something that is more dry. There we go And I hope everybody has the reference image If anybody has a problem finding the reference image it's on my Patreon. It's the most recent post so that you can take a look at the actual Rembrandt while you're watching me attempt attempt to do it justice And this is such a fun thing to do when your drawing is working If you spend time in making a charcoal drawing that's already functionally you know, operational then this step becomes so much fun because it really brings everything to life very very quickly And the light source starts to really shine. You know, now it's very evident that I'm gonna have to deal with something that's going on here in the hair before I can do anything else Maybe I'll do this first and then I'll do that So if I'm hitting an area that I haven't touched yet, I can reach out for my solvent again So here you see I'm gonna touch it with a bit of solvent and then when I refine this area I'm gonna not need the solvent anymore Marta asks Does the charcoal have fixative? Yes, it does. It has workable fixative applied to it and as I said before, it probably has too much fixative applied to it and next time I do this I'm gonna put less fixative because I was being fearful that if I don't put enough the charcoal is going to erase and as a result I put too many coats and now I kind of regret it but we'll make it work There we go Now let's get into the hair Stephanie asks What's the size of the panel? What's the size of the panel? It looks like 8 by 5 which is definitely not the size of the original painting but you know, we gotta work with the studio size we have There's one more question As you work on a master painting or drawing What are you thinking about? What is your focus? That's such a good question