Julie:
For all these years, I've worked mostly at direct painting -- a solid sketch/drawing, and then start painting. That's a difficult way to go, but if you keep at it, you eventually start to "get it." I thought I was in that notch, now -- of getting it -- so I decide to branch out and learn to paint the old fashioned way.
Over the years, I've read tons of stuff about painting -- all those techniques -- but that old master thing of using solid underpaintings kept popping up, so I decided I'd have a go at it.
I don't know about you, but it was like starting over, in some ways.
And those who write about it aren't all that clear, either. They talk about underpaintings using raw umber, burnt umber, all the different reds, black and white, and so on. This confuses me because when you start glazing/scumbling over them, you get different effects with different colors, leading me to believe that the color of the underpainting is quite important. But, these writers don't get into that very much. So, I feel I'm still out there on that limb of the tree labeled "for dumb students."
I would like to know more about it, but from what I've done so far, it's a very tricky thing. Gotta get that underpainting just the right degree of value and then you have to sort out what colors to glaze/scumble over them. It's about as tricky as when I started with direct painting -- sorting what color/value to use where.
Still, it picks away at me. I feel we should know as much as possible about making pictures.
I have found a site (
www.artpapa.com) run by a Russian who goes into some detail about it. Even has demonstrations, but I'm not sure I like what he says, which, in effect, is: We're not worried about the real color, just that we get a pretty picture in the end.
So far, my attempt has left me a bit dizzy -- it seemed more difficult to lay in color. That cussed underpainting keeps getting in the way. :-)