Sometimes when I'm doing a painting that's fairly gray, like this one
I use a yellow underpainting which adds a lot of energy and pizzazz to the painting. I 'll show you
how to paint the underpainting and why in this short video. (Music)
This old white house was the thrift store for the hospital, and I like the white in shadow
with the spots of light on it. But let me take you back to the night before when I prepared this page
using casein. It's a water-based paint, sort of like acrylic. It's a predecessor of acrylic.
I'm using golden ochre, cadmium yellow and white.
i put it fairly thinly on the surface of this watercolor paper using a synthetic flat brush...
...just enough to cover the surface of the paper but still retain the texture. Now when this dries
thoroughly I can apply gouache over it without the gouache picking up these layers—they'll stay down.
Now back on location with my homemade sketch easel, I use a water-soluble colored pencil
and start putting down the main lines of the picture
once i draw in the main eye level or horizon line and the main lines of the building
i can start brushing in the grayish colors for that white house color in shadow now
i know it doesn't look white at all looks dark gray but that's the color it has to be
if i surround it with enough dark greenish colors for the trees and then put bright spots of light
on it to look like direct sunlight that dark gray is going to look like a white building
that just happens to be in shadow i'm not trying too hard to cover up that yellow
with opaque paint i'm letting it show through a little bit and here with this dark greenish
gray i'm using fairly transparent paint and letting that yellow shine through
the color palette i use for this is a triad just three colors one is a rusty red called light red
the other is yellow ochre so light red and prussian blue all have iron that's why i call
it the iron triad and that's all i need just those three colors plus white to paint this
there's that reddish brick color
and then the tree color which i can make with prussian blue and yellow ochre
little by little the yellow underpanty gets covered up
but it comes through anyway it's kind of like having a fire in the basement
it reminds me of a ghost town in pennsylvania called centralia
below the town was a whole network of coal mines
there was a fire that started underneath the town in 1962 and they just couldn't put it out
and there was that heat under the surface that kept rising up until everyone had to leave
that's kind of what this is like you know you're trying to cover up that heat
that's in the basement of your picture
there was another fire in kirkpatrick ohio that went underground it's hard to put out
but this time it was a peat fire they've had him in ireland a few times too just keeps burning and
issuing smoke well with a painting like this that yellow in the underpainting is like that you can
cover it up with all the detail it encourages you to go opaque
in the final coverage because otherwise that fire will keep coming to the surface
throwing yourself off balance like this in a painting makes it fun and interesting for me
here's this brick siding on the hospital building in the distance
and then the wires these would be tv or internet cables the bottom most cables on a utility pole
here's another internet cable probably fiber optic cable going to the utility pole and carrying
across these have to be done in one stroke kind of have to hold your breath while you do them
so little by little the little yellow spots get
covered over by the paint and if a few of them show through that's okay
now you don't have to use casein for your under painting you can use a matte acrylic
or you can use acrylic wash which is basically the same thing
you can use tinted gesso and there are a few other options and i list all those different materials
in the description of this video down below okay i'm finished it's time to wrap it up here
so this idea of a yellow underpainting with just three colors on top offers a lot of potential for
experimenting on location that's the subject of my new art tutorial called triads this has been a
sample of it and i go into much more detail about various combinations of colors that you can use
to paint various kinds of pictures you can do bright colored scenes like this still life
or you can paint grayed down color schemes using bright colors to start with because
making grays is a key part of any painter's vocabulary and that's why i have eight
different ways of making gray we're going to learn not only how to paint on location
but also studio exercises that you can do at home to practice using colors in various combinations
using triads is a really great way to get used to using various pigments that you may not be
familiar with and to really understand how they work together in combination so check out my
new video there's a link in the description below this video to the gumroad video so you
can download your copy there's also a facebook group called color and practice where people are
sharing their uh experiments and both in the field and in the studio based on these tutorials
now before you click away i've got a video on the lower left with more on the iron triad
i've got a playlist of gouache paintings on the lower right
a website for signed books and merch and you can subscribe to this channel in the
upper right thanks for visiting don't forget to comment and like