I had not done a full underpainting
in a while; I forget how magical this process can be. Glazing color over the
grisaille creates an illusion of depth that is hard to achieve in any other
technique. Progress shots, drawing, umber
wipe -out, grisaille, color pass.
Grisaille – (griz-eye’)
fr.- grey an underpainting done entirely in monochrome shades of gray.
Craftsman, oil on linen panel, 11 x 14 in, Jim Serrett
First Color Pass: These are the first color layers over the underpaintings. I have attempted to develop each one equally and establish a similar refinement. It is obvious from the beginning the degree of finish or resolution is more observable in the further developed monochromatic underpaintings.
When I speak of “resolution” I am using it to describe the degree of focus, that with each color pass over the image you make small corrections and adjustments, slowly tuning in the image to the level of three-dimensional reality you wish to see in your painting. With this slow dialing in, each pass should be about fine tuning not correcting and selective focus instead of detail. That is key to moving forward towards you’re vision. The artist Sadie Valeri explains this dialing in like this, “that in every layer of the painting you get 50% closer to reality “and in each additional layer fifty percent more so on. Each one growing exponentially (building) on the last until you achieve a high degree of realism.
Form Painting: So, in the First Pass I wish to make the big statements of color, shape and edges over the value study and drawing. I want to think about color relationships comparing abstract passages of paint by chroma and temperature. To think about form, that each brush stroke exists in three-dimensional space and state where it is in light and where it is in shadow. The concept of light on form or modeling dimension like a sculpture is often referred to as Chiaroscuro – The contrast of light and shade. The act of modeling light and dark is called “Turning Form”. I like that adage because it simply describes the goal of representational painting to create the perception of depth.
My paint consistency varies depending on which underpainting I am working with but basically, over top of the underpainting I am using thinned transparent glazes which I then work into with more opaque paints wet into wet. Building up of transparent, semitransparent, semi-opaque, opaque and impasto layers of paint (glazes, scumbles, velauturas, impasto) that create different optical effects.
Starting top left moving clock wise- Grisaille, Bistre,
Ébauche, Imprimatura.
I am not quite ready to lose my drawing yet, plus I need the
values to affect the color passages and to build luminosity and depth. In each
paint passage I continue comparing hue, value, chroma, edges, and textures.
I
think form and atmosphere, not things.
Painting the points of contact, reflected light, the hills and valleys as light
rakes across the subject I look for delicate passages and subtle shading. I
look for the “air” around the subject, (as odd as that sounds) and try to paint
the atmosphere.
Hue - is a color’s characteristic, where it lies in the color
spectrum, (the color name)
and which temperature it leans
towards, warm or cool.
Value – is the relative degree of
grayness, lightness or darkness of a color.
Chroma – is the colors intensity, the
degree of brilliance of a color, from intense to dull.
Chiaroscuro, (from Italian: chiaro,
“light,” and scuro, “dark”) 1. The contrast of light and shade and the art of
distributing these elements in a picture planes. 2. Light and shade as they
define three-dimensional objects
Summary: The main
purpose of underpainting is to solve the problems of composition, drawing and
value so that you can concentrate solely on the application of paint. Using a
variety of techniques to realistically create the illusion of depth, form and
atmosphere. (The amount of light, depth and atmosphere you can achieve in this
manner is almost magical.) Multiple veils of transparent color contrasted by
opaque light passages, produces a level of realism that I believe cannot be
matched with other approaches. You literally carve out volume with this method.
Which type of underpainting to use, Grisaille, Bistre,
Ébauche, or Imprimatura is about knowing
the strengths of each and being able to look at an object as say, “Yes this
approach will work best to achieve that", kind of knowing which tool to reach
for in the tool box. I was going to go into my thoughts on each and compare
strengths and weaknesses? But feel it better to not muddy the waters with that and
let people come to their own conclusion. Maybe I will touch on it later, but for now I will say there
is a wealth of knowledge within these methods to explore and doing so will
expose how to get the maximum impact of what the material can do.
As a Realist, it is important to have a comprehensive range
of techniques to draw from and expand your artistic vocabulary.
The “wipe-out-method”, ( Bistre Method.) with the layered approach.
First Image: Click above image for larger view.
I start the image by covering the white canvas with an overall thinned mix of brown made from umbers, almost a sepia tone. I lift out areas to build lights, and add more brown for the darker tones. The lightest lights are the white of the canvas instead of white pigment. I begin simply stating the pattern of light and dark, and editing them by wiping out and adding pigment back in as I refine my underpainting. Once I have my basic structure and design stated, I can proceed with a number of methods. You can have underdrawings that range from summary sketches to highly finished compositions. I could continue refining the underpainting with more browns, or move to more opaque paints of white and grey (Grisaille) developing a full monochrome underpainting for later glazes. Or work directly on top of this with full color.
My intent is to incorporate a little of all these indirect painting methods in this image. But the majority of this image will be done in a layer method.
Second Image:
When working in the layered method, a great deal of alterations (color modification and redrawing) can be done throughout the painting, and uniquely, one can easily incorporate different effects with transparent, semi transparent (glazing and scumbling) as well as opaque paints.
I refine the background with more opaque paint, keeping the edges soft and atmospheric.
I will want to merge the bottle neck with the cast shadow on the wall, but need to state the areas around it, to give myself good references
I begin to thinly model the darkest areas of the bottle to help better judge the lighter translucent parts of the bottle. I restate the petals with flake white. I want them read as a solid surface and later to have some texture.
Third Image:
I concentrate on bringing as much finish to an area as I can, relating one area to another, working the image as a whole, looking for more accuracy in shapes and color notes.
In each layer I bring the image a little more into focus, reexamining and correcting problems as I zero in on the finish I want.
That may sound contradictory, but the goal is to accomplish as much as one can at each sitting and paint layer, yet bring the image together as a whole.
The Wood Poppy, I work-up with color and some thicker impasto strokes, the stem and leaves get a glaze of greens with some opaque highlights.
Finished Image: Wood Poppy - 8”x10” - Oil on panel.
I continue working the image with layers by bringing areas into fuller focus.
Keeping in mind lost and found edges, where do I want things to be a bit softer (blurred), and harder (sharper). The pedals get some heavy sculpted brush strokes, and the bottle receives some glazes to unify areas and soften others. I build up paint in the highlights with some impasto strokes.
I’m pretty happy with the piece at this point and I think I’ve answered most of the visual problems set before me and will probably consider it finish.
However I really like to set a work aside for several days and look at it with a fresh eye before it gets the finishing signature.
For a visual explanation of this process click the video below.
A couple of notes:
The layered method really requires the painting to dry between layers and sittings. So a fast dry medium works best, I used Maroger Painting Medium in this work. But there are many other medium choices, 1to-1to-5 of linseed, dammar and turps will work just fine. Just work thin to thick, lean to fat and when using mediums, less is more.
In all of these underpainting exercises I chose to use flowers in a small format. Keep in mind, if using perishable items such as these you will need a good drawing reference or a resource to replace the flower, lucky for me Linda’s passion for gardening is a endless resource. Also I am not attempting to produce floral for a botanist field guide, and I am just attempting color, shade and shape in the hopes of an illusion of reality with a spark of color.
Closing Thoughts, ... yes there is more … on technique, Titian and artist's today.
My original intent was to explore the technique of the Master Titian, his method of underpainting and building a painting. I have come to the realization that no single approach truly reflects this master, and that all the methods I have been exploring including this demonstration were employed and exploited to achieve his unique versatility. Titian certainly used the underpainting methods of the Flemish and Venetian schools, but also had approaches similar to that of the French Academic tradition.
He would work directly from life on the canvas, often described as attacking it with a brush. In his underpainting he would use tonal painting in warm earth tones, and use a scale of cool grays for flesh tones. Some areas such as the figure would be highly model into a grisaille, and others simply stated in umber. Painting on to it with a semi transparent paint “velatura” in a layered method, making revisions, with new layers and glazes, building textures and surface with “frottage”, sort of a dry brush of pigment over dried layers and finishing with high impasto for his highlights. Certainly very innovative in his painting approach, but keep in mind, Titian would live a long and productive life. Living to be nearly 90 years old, in some pretty inhospitable times, his life would span and compete with some of the greatest artists in world history. It must be comparable to being there when the first human invented the wheel. He was very inventive and fearless in his approach, seeming to have very little restrictions in his method, pulling from his tool box that which fit best to the problem and imagery at hand.
The artist Jose Parramon referred to Titian as the “founder of modern painting”. A statement I must agree with, for Titian certainly was testing the limits of his medium and thinking outside the box in some very revolutionary ways.
His mastery of techniques and procedures is definitely worth study, centuries of paintings and knowledge for us to copy and enjoy, the Master’s obvious gift to the world.
But it is not just the technical virtuosity we should emulate.
These artists were on a quest of discovery, to describe the mysteries and beauty of nature.
Through that inquisitive thinking, they made great contributions to our artistic vocabulary. They were not just practicing technical gymnastics, but deeply concentrating on the act of painting and the artistic dialogue with the principles of nature.
An Old Master such as Titian painted with intellect, curiosity, and passion.
.
This is what artists today need and must be imitating.
Explore – question – learn – enjoy
Jim
A quote by Titian, said while in his 70’s…………
“I think I am beginning to learn something about painting.” …. Titian
This is the second in a series of explorations in underpainting techniques. In this demonstration I will produce a complete underpainting in monochrome, thus establishing a full tonal range and three dimensional form for later color glazes. The underpainting is done in a neutral grey, called a “Grisaille’, or a cool greenish grey, referred to as a “Verdaccio.”
But before we get into the demo, lets talk about dimension.
Truth is… without some research or a guide, I can not tell you what most of the Old Master’s works are about. What the narrative, myth or Biblical story they might be telling us is, nor do I actually care. What I do know is that in the sixteenth and seventh centuries a handful of artist where producing work that has not been match since. When I look at these works, it is not so much about “content” as it is about “form”.
These artists, in a way unmatched for centuries, took an object, canvas or panel, that only has two dimensions, width and height, and gave it a third, …depth.
Not just linear depth but a true glowing internal illusion of space.
This depth gave them a means to truly express, in a masterfully beautiful way, anything they wished to say.
Their methods are certainly an artistic tradition worth investigating.
The Venetian Method:
First Image: click above image for larger view.
I start with a dry panel that was toned with an imprimatura of umber. And begin to sketch the image directly and thinly in umber. Paying attention to the outline and shadow patterns of the image. My paint is about the consistency of ink, and I will mainly use a soft hair brush. But a steel nib pen can be used to literally draw with the paint some of the finer lines of the contours. I worked this stage in two layers of umber. Refining and correcting until I felt the light and shadow pattern made visual sense and distinguished the most obvious contrast.
Second Image:
I begin working on the umber drawing with a mixture of black, white and ochre. Sort of a cold olive grey called a Verdaccio. Describing the effect of light and shade. I am building in layers opaquely, modeling the form and values to explain in more detail the light family, (planes on the image turned towards the source of light), and shadow family, (planes on the image turned away from the source of light).
Third Image:
Several painting sessions later I have my completed underpainting. I try to keep everything cool, neutral and in a mid tone range, saving the lightest lights and darkest darks for the color glazing step. At this stage the light, middle-tones, shadows, reflected lights and cast shadows should all be well refined. The high-lights will be applied at the end stage. Outside of that, this is the completed painting in monochrome.
Fourth Image: - WIP – Woodland Phlox – 8”x10”
After allowing the underpainting to dry completely I begin the color layers. It always amazes me how little pigment it takes at this stage to start getting some of those deep effects of depth and form. When glazing I will use three brushes, one to apply some medium very thinly to the underpainting in the area I will be working,(called a Couch) and wiping off the excess. Another to apply the paint into the couch and push the glaze around and a third brush to wipe out portions of the glaze. The glazes should have different levels to them, taking full advantage of the values in the underpainting, not applied like a varnish over a piece of wood. I continue building the layers keeping the shadows thin and transparent and the light becoming more and more opaque with scumbling, scumbling lightens up the dried layer, making it more opaque, where glazing darkens the tone of the color on top. I apply the highlight in opaque impasto to finish the piece, hopefully creating the illusion of three dimensional space I was looking for.
At this point I will leave the painting to dry for several days, returning later with a fresh eye to decide if this work is complete.
If you research the oil painting history of the past, especially those techniques that produced the remarkable results of the Old Masters between the sixteenth and seventh centuries, or are interested in any modern effort to emulate them. We will find those roots lead to the Flemish and Venetian Schools.
The invention of oil painting is attributed to the Van Eyck brothers, Hubert and Jan in or around 1400 in the city of Bruges, the capital of West Flanders. Disenchanted with the use of egg tempera, the common painting medium of the time, they experimented with various oils and resins. According to the story, they were looking for a medium “that would dry in the shade”, and developed what we today would call Oil Painting.
The Flemish Technique continued with the practices of the earlier egg tempera painters, using detailed preliminary sketches transfer to small wooden panels. The qualities of this new oil paint medium was that it could be apply transparently or opaquely creating a much greater illusion of depth than prior egg tempera works. Also overcoming the slow drying time of tempera, it allowed them to develop more elaborate underpaintings. A brownish transparent underpainting;(bistre), to establish a tonal range for the subject, over which they applied thin veils of transparent local color, modeling light and darks with further glazes very similarly to a modern water colorist. It was a revolutionary process, and was what my earlier post “Spring Flowers” was exploring.
Jan van Eyck, Saint Barbara, Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp
The innovations of the Flemish painters found their way to the Italian artists of the Early Renaissance, presumably through Giorgio Bellini and his teachings. It was not long before leading artists in Rome and Venice were experimenting with the method, including Leonardo da Vinci. The Venetians were quick to see the possibilities and limitations of this method and made some unique adaptations to the process.
The thin bistre earth tone underpainting was difficult to make corrections on in the underpainting stage, was rigorously tight for many of the large mural sized canvases the Venetians were working on at that time.
And though not as noticeable in the small wooden panels of the Flemish painter, the oil-resin medium produced unwanted glare. The Venetians answer was to modify the medium by removing the resin, replacing it with beeswax to reduce glare. They used opaque mixtures of values such as a gray (grisaille) or greenish-gray (verdaccio) to paint a detailed underpainting in monochromatic, which allowed easy modification and revisions directly on the canvas before applying glazes of colors. With the advancement of the grisaille and techniques such as scrumbling, dry brushing (frottage) and impasto, the control of soft and hard edges, along with semi-glazes, and glazing allowed the Venetian painters to stretch oil painting beyond anything that came before. All adding to the painter’s tool box. The Venetians were able to propel the art of painting into the High Renaissance, and collectively produced some of the greatest works of art of Western civilization. In the painting “Woodland Phlox” I humbly attempt to explore this approach.
The majority of the Old Masters employed some type of underpainting in some variation. For example the unfinished work by Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna and Child with St. Anne, shows a brown transparent underpainting such as used by the van Eycks, but the Master begins finishing the underpainting with opaque white and tones of green- gray (verdaccio).
In Michelangelo’s unfinished work, Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist and Angels, we have underpainting not only in verdaccio, but black and white, using the canvas as the white. Raphael, Durer, Rembrandt, Vermeer, David, all used some variation of the technique and of course as did Titian.
Attempting to understand who was doing what, and when, can get very confusing. Many of the Old Masters were contemporaries of each other, and they must have shared knowledge or observed the efforts of each other. Interesting that in 1510, about mid point of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci was 58 years old, Michelangelo 35, Raphael 27, Durer 39, Titian 26, and all were recognized artist. Leonardo da Vinci would live for about another ten years, while Michelangelo would live on to the age of 89. Having great influence on the next generation of painters such as Rubens, Caravaggio, Veronese. Titian would live to be nearly 90, his life would span da Vinci’s and Michelangelo’s making him a contemporary of both. His work was based in the Venetian method, but was much more aggressive. Titian, painted and composed directly from life, attacking the canvas with a brush. In areas he would model form with grays and other areas earth tones, and use glazes and velaturas of color over them. He would finish with sessions of direct painting, using half impasto, full impasto, rubbing and dragging colors in the technique of (frottage). He threw everything but the kitchen sink into his paintings. For his energetic direct approach, Titian is often referred to as the founder of modern painting.
In my last installment on the techniques of underpainting I will be attempting to understand Titians method and painting a third small floral. At the bottom of this post are some links and references for those interested in the Flemish and Venetian schools.
Enjoy.
Resources, and great reads.
How to Paint Like The Old Masters, by Joseph Sheppard
The Big Book of Oil Painting, by Jose Parramon
Encyclopaedia of Oil Painting, by Frederick Palmer
Formulas For Painters, by Robert Massey
Preparation For Painting, by Lynton Lamb
Oil 24x30 Still life with Two Pears - finished work
Still life's are such a joy to paint, they can become very intimate moments in time. And remarkable abstract qualities seen within the play of light and shadow. It is those subtle and complex relationships within a painting that attracts me to a subject.
This piece was done in a very traditional or classical method of thin transparent color, "velaturas" applied over a gray " grisaille" monochrome under painting. Posted earlier in this blog.
The amount of light, depth and atmosphere you can achieve in this manner is almost magical. Multiple veils of transparent color contrasted by opaque light passages, produces a level of realism that I believe can not be matched with other approach. You literally carve out volume with this method.
