A step by step photo shoot of how I make my underpaintings.

Hello and good Saturday!

Today I started a new portrait and decided to take some photos of my process as I painted.

Underpainting in the makings.

As this was my first day I started with stage one of my process called The Under Painting!

Let's go!

This is my panel that I am painting on after I put an imprimatura on it. Today I used acrylics to lay down the first layer of value to soften the white of the panel. Usually I use oil paint with turpentine, but that takes a while longer to dry and I prefer to work with a dry layer of imprimatura when I start my under painting.

My strokes of paint are very generic and are just to feel out the biggest proportions.

Still working very general but starting to give myself some reference points.

Here I am developing more of the features an subtleties in the face. With my underpaintings I usually work with very dry paint, meaning I never use a lot of medium to make the paint looser and more runny. So far I have just worked with dry brushes to put on and remove paint.

Here I have introduced a little white to get a feel for the light intensity and values so far in my underpainting. I also think it helps me get more of a sense of form.

At this point I am really starting to digging into the form. If you see from the previous stage you can see the eyes changed a lot. This model has very light blue eyes so I felt lightening them in value even at this early stage really helped me achieve more of a recognition.

Now I am adding the hair. My model has these great dreads which I will try to have a lot of the underpainting show through in the final painting. It can add cool effects and is something worth thinking about in these initial stages.

And there you have it!!

Underpainting done!

This took me a couple of hours and I will leave the painting to dry for a couple of days before I lay down the next layer.

I haven't been painting with my oil paints in forever and it felt good to get back into it!

Let's see what happens with this one, hopefully it will turn out good!

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend.

😊🙏❤✨🖌