UNDERPAINTING.

UNDERPAINTING. Annalisa knows that I am interested in underpainting. When she and I painted in a plein-air event for the Rowayton Arts Center, as I described here, she helped me experiment with underpainting. I had never thought about it, but some paintings have multiple layers of paint. Annalisa says that a typical number for some painters she admires is 6 to 10 layers. This wikipedia article says that underpainting helps “to define colour values for later painting.” Apparently, the initial layers affect our perception of the colors. The wikipedia article says: “The colors of the underpainting can be optically mingled with the subsequent overpainting, without the danger of the colors physically blending and becoming muddy.”