Animal & Wildlife
Animal and Wildlife Art Lessons
"Lioness"
By Jason Morgan
2 - Transferring to Toned Canvas and Underpainting
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To prepare the already gessod canvas I tone it with a thin mixture of Burnt and Raw Sienna Acrylic paint, this seals the transferred drawing, which will stop it smudging when overpainted with oil paint, a toned canvas will also allow me to see the lights and darks more easily than on a white base. With the acrylic dry I can now switch to using oil paints and paint in the darkest darks using Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber i.e. - the eyes, nose, mouth and nails. I paint these darks in right at the start because I want to make rich, deep darks, this would have been very difficult if I already had lighter paint underneath it.
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With the darks established I now begin to block in the basic colours, the accuracy of the colours are not really too important at the stage and I am much more interested in getting the values correct. On the left hand side of the canvas you can see that I am still writing myself little reminders for later. Even now after just 30 mins of painting you can see a solid base beginning and this will give me a good platform on which I can add the details and textures.
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