Mountain Lake Painting for Beginners:
Underpainting Essentials – Week 3
So far in January we are learning to paint from the very beginning to a finished landscape painting. This week we are going to paint an underpainting.
What exactly is an underpainting? An underpainting is your roadmap for where you want to take your artwork. It’s not a finished painting by any stretch of the imagination, but it gets you on the road to a finished painting.
An underpainting helps you place your elements of your painting and get your canvas completely covered with paint. This video will take you through my underpainting of the Mountain Lake.
Parts of an Underpainting
- Transfer your drawing to your canvas or other painting surface
- I started with clouds first, but many artists start at the top and work their way down or put in all the darkest parts of the painting first.
- Continue with each section until your canvas is completely covered in paint.
- Don’t spend lots of time on anyone section
- Do NOT get discouraged at this point. It’s important to keep going.
- Many beginning artists quit at this stage because they don’t like their painting. It’s not done yet.
- Painting is a process and this is like step 2 out of 35.
I can’t stress enough for you to not get discouraged here. This is no where near a finished painting. If you could compare this to learning to play the piano, you are on book 1 and are learning one-handed scales. You are no where near Mozart, but you’re on the path.
If You Missed The 2 Earlier Videos
Click HERE to watch Week 1.
Click HERE to Watch Week 2
This series of FREE videos is to help you learn the essentials in learning to paint a landscape. I am doing my best to teach not only the how but, maybe more importantly, the why artists do the things they do, as well as how to get from part A to part Z and be happy with your progress.
Painting Is A Process
No one sits down at the easel and paints great from the beginning. Painting is a skill and it takes time, patience and practice to hone any skill. Think of a golfer hitting hundreds of balls at the driving range and then moving over to the putting green and putting for an hour. Then go to the sand trap and practice chipping out of there. They haven’t even gotten on the course yet but they’ve already practiced for hours.
Painting is very similar in that there are many things to learn about your tools, planning out a painting, and then beginning to paint. That’s where you are on the timeline. You’re learning how to paint. You cannot allow yourself to be judgmental of your work, not at this stage of the game.
Find JOY In The Process!
As you learn to paint you will notice that you do some things great and other things not so great. Find joy in and celebrate the great things, the things you really like about your art and set aside any and all criticism for the things you’re not crazy about. Maybe keep a list of the things you do well and add no more than 3 things you now know you need to practice on and the next time you sit down to paint, warm up by practicing on one or two of those things. No obsessing though.
Painting, like golf can be frustrating. Have you ever seen a golfer miss a one foot putt. I have and I know they’ve played for years and practiced for hours and hours and yet they still occasionally miss. Creating art is exactly like that. Unlike golf, painting is very subjective and not everyone will like your art, but you must love the process and the improvement you are making. If only as an artist we could put the ball in the hole and know it’s a great painting. Sadly, art is not like that.
I have been wrong about creating art and this blog post explains how wrong I was.
I have a FREE beginning artist bundle I’d love to share with you. Click HERE to get it delivered to your inbox. (Relax. I never share or sell your email address and I have no intention of clogging up your inbox.)
I hope you’re enjoying this art journey with me as I love seeing the light come on in my students eyes as they start to understand and improve on their process.
Thanks for being here today and next week we’ll be spending time learning how to paint and refine our clouds. Don’t miss it. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the notification bell so you never miss a part of this exciting FREE series.
Sharon Durbin Graves
P.S. Click HERE to view my art.