When I started painting at the first of the year, everyone suggested monochromatic studies at first, so I did a lot of 'underpaintings' by default. And since I had a book about the technique and could search the Forum for even more, I started glazing over all of them. And I eventually started doing verdaccio underpaintings as monochromatic studies and glazing over those, as well.
Because I could draw a (very) little, it was easy to fall into the trap of completing a fully rendered charcoal drawing, laying a verdaccio underpainting down over, and then trying to glaze everything. It was all tightly rendered, just not very good.
Since portraiture was what I have always wanted to do, someone in another Forum suggested doing ten quick portraits from Old Master paintings. Just very quick oil sketches, really. What I found, much to my delight, was that I actually produced better work with the 'slap-it-on-and-move-it-around' method. Also, it seemed to be much more fun.
Nowadays, I mainly do rough value sketches with a brush in Umber or Sienna, often using a lot of rubouts, and then I just start in with colors, moving back to front. It still ain't pretty, but it's an improvement. I wish I could have been convinced to work this way from the very beginning.
Minh "Teacherless" Thong
By the way, Mr. Mattelson, I loved your site and would give up a bodypart to be able to move to NY and study under you.
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