What Does an Underpainting Do?

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If you spend any time on the Plein air side of the internet, I'm sure you have heard of underpaintings. An underpainting is a layer of paint that will later influence the rest of the painting. Artist like James Gurney and Jared Cullum make some of the best use of this technique. While this technique may seem a bit confusing now, by the end of this article, you'll begin to get the gist. 


1. Forces you to Cover the Whole Page
If you are using an opaque medium and you want to make sure that you paint the whole page opaquely, an underpainting can be a great way to achieve your goal. It would be almost impossible to ignore a missing spaces when they are bright orange instead of white. Some artist like to leave bits of color exposed, but if you want to cover it all you certainly can. Covering the whole page opaquely also lends itself well to that unique gouache look. 

I use this a lot for plein-air

2. Blank Page Syndrome
You are excited to paint, you pull out your sketchbook open to a blank page and all of a sudden, nothing, you don't know where to start. Not only can this be very frustrating for artists, it is also more common than you might think. One way to begin to get over this 'Blank Page Phobia' is to start with an underpainting. Now when you turn to a blank page, the only question to ask is "what color do I feel like using today?". I find that just starting painting, even if it's an underpainting, makes it so much easier to finish.
Note the orange underpainting by the left-side

3. Light from Underneath
This point is sort of the antithesis of the first one. While you can use an underpainting to inspire you to cover the whole page, you can also use it to purposefully leave 'blank spaces. If you use paint with transparency they underpainting will shine through in a way, changing the mood of the whole piece. 

Even though I tried to cover the page, bits of yellow still show underneath

4. Pre-Planning
Another way that underpaintings come in handy is as a sort of road map for your painting. By using a loose, transparent underpainting, you can plan out shapes and values essentially risk free. 

5.Make Your Painting Harmonious
I began to touch on this during the third reason but It is definitely deserving of its own explanation. If you paint even the least bit transparently, whatever color is underneath will come through and affect the layers above. This can be used to pull a painting together. This is also a good way to tie together a color palette that might not make sense otherwise. 

In this painting I'm working over a tan underpainting

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