Limited palette portrait studies in charcoal and paint. Developing a sound underpainting/drawing. Modeling and volume.

 

Value Studies

Previously, I proposed a couple of drawing exercises: gesture and continuous line. An important third aspect of drawing (and painting) is value and creating believable lights and darks! It’s great fun to form shapes entirely with with lights and darks – placing darker areas behind light and vice-versa (forming the boundary rather than drawing it).

Here’s a great way to approach tonal studies which works really well in both charcoal and paint – it’s perhaps the most painterly way of drawing and the process translates easily into painting. It almost deserves its own category: neither drawing, nor painting, it’s rendering. It’s at the core of many pastels and paintings for example, and in this video I start off by using some nice messy charcoal:

Method

I begin with a mid-tone application of uncompressed charcoal – lightly rubbing charcoal all over my drawing surface using the side of the twig. Don’t try compressed charcoal, which sticks to the paper a good deal more and is difficult to erase. I then pull out lights with a kneadable eraser (a must – I don’t think I have any square erasers anymore). I’m focusing on the large shapes and relationship of forms in blocks of light. Typically, there’s a scary stage where nothing seems to be happening and then….Oh! there’s a ghosted image – faint but real. In portraits, the effect is a bit like the Shroud of Turin.

Now I switch to pushing in darks and then work away with charcoal on the darkest areas – again, shapes and not lines, with blocks of light and dark. When you see shapes, you’re creating a jigsaw puzzle, distinct and separate from the subject and this always works the eye rather than the brain – the brain typically being the “bad guy”: over-thinking , making assumptions, judging.

As if by magic, there’s an image, which only then do I reinforce with some line. An image built out of just 3 values: light, mid-tone and dark, set on a ground of mid-tone and quite unlike those pencil sketches that most are used to.

It’s a technique so alien to many, but the light goes on and some find it a revelation. When I first encountered the approach, I almost felt it was cheating!

Exercise:

1. Take a couple of portrait references of your choice or from the Reference Gallery and develop a value study from a couple of studies starting from a mid-tone, as above. Use uncompressed charcoal and a kneadable eraser  (as  mentioned earlier, compressed charcoal tends to dig into the paper and not lift nearly as well).
2. You could also try a paint study using the same process: starting with a mid-tone wash, pulling out the lights with a rag and dry brushes (you have to be fairly quick in acrylic) and then putting in the darks with a stronger paint mix. This will work well with a neutral dark grey or brown.

Low-tone study or underpainting!

Now we’re getting to the really good stuff: with paints and also a little colour. A portrait study such as this can be a delight in it’s own right or a foundation to be further developed. The foundation or underpainting can be the most important stage of a painting. It’s the place to refine the composition, work through the value equations and evolve ideas. Maybe there will be a Eureka! moment, when the painting starts talking and you learn where it has to go.

In the following video, I tackle a low-tone paint sketch. Notice that I start with an approach that is similar to the preceding charcoal exercise and as I keep going the image comes into focus:

Method

Underpaintings can be completed in any (typically subdued) tone: blues, browns, greys and greens can all work. Each will assert a certain feel into the final work – sometimes dramatically so, where the underpainting forms an integral part of the final image.

I’m known as a bit of a colourist, but typically evolve my images in very limited palettes, applying colour on previously established values. It’s difficult to deal with colour and value at the same time and adding colour is never a substitute for a lack in the value department – you can’t solve a value problem with more colour!

I generally favour using a brown and a blue as a limited palette variation of a pure monochromatic underpainting. The thing I like is that it allows for a variation of warms (browns) and cools (blues) that can almost complete a painting…without adding much colour at all. Don’t be frightened of blues in the shadows and features, you need them! My general rule is, the darker the value, the bluer it must be. Mid-tones and lights in brown, with darks all having a deep blueish tinge. Warm tones advance and cools recede, giving the viewer all the right messages.

Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine blue are my go-to tubes. These two colours work superbly together: warm browns mixing to cool, intense black and then blues, needed to establish a foundation. I add some titanium white to make some grey tones and highlights.

Exercise:

From the reference of your choice or the Reference Gallery develop a low-tone painting using a brown and a blue. Start from a mid-tone and proceed in a similar manner as for the previous charcoal study. That is, make the primary focus the  lights, mid-tones and darks (3 zones). The additional opportunity in this study is to make the darks cooler (that is bluer) than the lights, plus you can use white to reinforce lights (although I like to wipe out the lights whilst the paint is still wet).