I have just looked at Karin's demonstration of underpainting and have a few questions.
I am dealing with issues of value range myself and underpainting (or the lack of it in my case) seems to be a large part of the solution. For those more experienced artists, bear with me as I have had absolutely no artistic training (this Forum is my first and I am thoroughly enjoying it). Here are my questions:
1. Should underpainting always be used as the basis of oil portraits? I presume the next step would be to apply color to the underpainting - is this done in glazes, so that the values are retained, or pretty thickly once you have established the value range?
2. I noticed that Karin used a mixture of raw umber and titanium white. Are there certain underpainting colors that are particularly complementary of flesh tones? I have heard some artists mention green as a good undertone for skin.
3. Related to the above, is there a particular rule concerning the best color to use in an underpainting that will vivify the final coat if it is not flesh colored (e.g., a red hat
)?
Administrator's Note: Karin's underpainting demo is here http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...=&threadid=794.