Under painting techniques

Part 4 in this series of tutorials for beginners making the transition from drawing to oil painting. Today, the importance of value & tone.

Now that I’m full time at this and painting a lot more, I have more opportunity to try things out and develop my painting process as I go. I’m going to try to post a bit more here about how my process is changing currently, and how I put my paintings together, since it might give you some ideas f

Many years ago, in an effort to improve the value structure of my paintings, I started blocking-in many of my paintings monochromatically. I used raw or burnt umber, without white, for the under-painting. By concentrating only on value – the light to dark patterns of the painting – I quickly discovered it was an excellent... Read more »

I recently completed this oil painting of Fort Lauderdale Beach. My goal was to use different color and values of the beach here in Florida that I have painted several times in the past. Below is the oil painting step by step.

An underpainting, or underdrawing, is the first layer of paint you apply to your canvas to either help establish values or to get rid of the white of the canvas. Using

This is the under painting for my newest painting, a Maine marsh, landscape painting (Hint: "Like" my facebook page and follow the d...

Since the day the late Brock Linehan asked me "What do you know for sure?", and I had trouble answering.

Full-length, step-by-step tutorial showing how to use the umber under painting method to draw a cloudy day landscape. Umber Under Painting Method - Cloudy Landscape includes tips on setting up your composition, choosing colors, and finishing your drawing.