More small paintings

I’ve been wanting to see what happens when one paints over a solid color underpainting.  Because of the lifting characteristic of gouache, I wondered how much of the undercoat would be picked up and mixed with the new strokes.  So, here are five experiments, using different colors as a base coat.  In some cases, I did a light pencil sketch first, then painted the entire surface with a single color.  In other cases, I painted directly over the undercoat, with no preliminary drawing.  And in a couple of cases, I did simple gouache sketches, then painted over them with the undercoat.

In fact, I managed to remember to scan a couple of the sketches, so here they are first:

And here are five new little pieces done over a color underpainting.  All are 5×7.  The first was done on Multimedia Artboard; the rest were on Crescent cold press illustration board.  My personal preference for this is the illustration board.  The paint seems to sit on the surface of the Multimedia board, and doesn’t dry quite as fast.  On the Crescent board, the paint dries immediately, and is absorbed into the board, thus giving me a better paint surface to work on top of.  I also found that I needed to use more opaque strokes, rather than very wet.  I’m happy with the results, and will probably introduce the underpainting into a lot more of my work.

~ by Ralph Parker on June 22, 2009.