The Umber Under Layer, your 2nd layer in oil painting techniques.

You are now at the Umber Under layer portion of the lessons. You've selected your subject, and your ink drawing is completed. You have painted your first coat "imprimatura" and it has dried for awhile. If you used Damar varnish, it should be several days, if you used the alkyd medium, it should be the next day.

You are now ready for the umber under layer. In this layer you will establish the overall contrast of your painting.

We will talk about oiling out again, and the use of a natural product that contains ether oils and will help in the oiling out of your work!

You will become a watercolorist during this session of lessons!

I'll also talk about "dry brush blending". A very important part of this technique. Really, they are your secret weapon that are not very much talked about in schools! Once you learn this, you'll have the tools to make powerful pieces! Knowledge is power!

After slicing the onion, rub the exposed flesh directly onto the canvas. Use a circular motion to cover the entire canvas. The smell mixed with your lavender oil will make your studio have a very distinct smell. Don't worry, it doesn't stick to you like cigarette smoke will.

After this, take a little linseed oil into the palm of your hand and rub this onto your canvas, (leaving the onion juice in place). Rub into the canvas. The heat from your hand will help the oils adhere onto the canvas.

You will then apply paint, burnt umber (why we call it the Umber under layer)that is mixed with a little turps/damar medium to the canvas. Umber also drys very quickly and is an earth tone, and easy to manufacture and thus cheaper to use! Use the mixture proportions discussed earlier in (link) portion of the site.

After applying your paint, use the correcting brush to blend slightly, remove or push more paint to areas necessary on the canvas. In this example I just wanted an even distribution of paint for the background and not much correcting was used.

These next two photo's show one of my favorite secrets revealed. It is the use of the dry mop brush for blending. This tool alone enables you to make effects with oil paint that is thought only possible with an air brush.

Its soft bristles and the manner in which you will use it will create a very even coat of paint. Completely removing brush strokes where only your color is seen.

It will also help you create a graduation (transition from dark to light)in color or paint that will resemble the best in watercolor paintings' washes.

Only the very end of the bristles are used. It is a motion similar to woman applying rouge to her cheeks. Much wrist action. The photo below shows on the left a blended area, on the right an incomplete area.

You will use this technique in the umber under layer and in every other layer except the final finishing layer where brush strokes, thickly applied highlights are left as placed to give the viewer the sense of built up paint that most folks like in their oil paintings.

Here you see the paint being applied for the cast shadow of the pitcher. I use a small to medium sized brush to applied an even coat of paint and medium mixture.

I'm applying the correcting brush to blend the edge of a shadow in this photo.

Finishing up the cast shadow with the mop dry blending brush. This brush is cleaned often with TP to keep as clean and dry as possible. If you need to clean it with turps, use a 2nd brush until the turps dry on the first or you will pick up way to much paint from the canvas rather than just brushing the paint layer smooth.

After allowing this to dry, You may want to darken some area's a little more. In this example, I went back and re-applied additional paint to the outside corners only to help focus the eye to the center.

Or, you can head back to the Main Art Lessons page

Or, review this page again by heading back up to top of the Umber Under Layer lesson.