Understanding Underpainting Terms
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Verdaccio - Italian
Verdaccio is a style of underpainting, which uses green-grey colours to establish values for later layers of paint. The technique is renowned for being particularly effective when painting flesh tones. As such, it was popular amongst Renaissance artists, and Leonardo da Vinci used verdaccio underpainting in his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa.
According to American born Naturalist / Realist Painter, Adrian Gottlieb, in order accomplish this southern Renaissance style of underpainting, you'll need two ranges of color; one green, and one a bit pinker.
"The colors on your palette will be chrome green oxide, sinopia (a redish-brown earth color used in painting and fresco), lead white and ivory black. All values are around two or three steps higher than in nature. This insures that the underpainting will drive up the luminiosity of the colors that are laid on top.
Shadows are made of green, red, and black if necessary. Midtones are of the green range, and lights are of the pink range."
It has been Gottlieb's experience that "other reds and greens are not as effective for this method. There is a brilliance to sinopia and chrome green oxide that others can't seem to match quite as well." He uses this method particularly in paintings of women and very complicated passages, especially hands.
"Glazing over Verdaccio is actually quite simple. Since the color being left out in the underpainting is yellow-orange, a glaze of varying mixtures of yellow ochre and genuine rose madder are usually all that is called for."
One formula for Verdaccio (You will find a wide range of suggested underpainting formulas. This is just one of many; however, this is the one that I use when creating paintings in the style of Italian Old Masters):
At Value 2 combine 1/3 mars black, 2/3 chromium oxide green. Add 50% of the value 2 mixture with 50% Mars black at Value 1. Values 3 through 9 are gradually lightened with flake white with a 10% value change between each number.
Grisaille - French
Monochromatic painting usually in various tones of gray. Traditionally the underpainting of a work, where local color is applied over the grisaille as opaque, semi-opaque or transparent color. Often shadows are colored with transparent colors and highlights are built up with increasing thickness of opaque paint
Dead layer
What is general purpose of the dead layer?: Which colors should I use to perform this layer?
I think you are referring to the "dead coloring" which is a term which goes back to at least the seventeenth century and refers to the cadaverous quality of the gray underpainting in many early oil paintings. Eastlake traces these gray underpaintings back to Leonardo and the technique of beginning a painting with a solid underpainting in gray was perfected by Titian and the Venetian painters. There are many advantages to beginning a painting in gray tones and then afterwards adding color by glazing and scumbling. They are too numerous to mention. Suffice to say, begin you painting with black and white with a little red and yellow ochre thrown in to tint the grays. The finished underpainting should look like a low contrast somewhat washed out black and white photograph with a slightly purplish tint. Paint this solidly in the lights and darks and use a quick drying white such as a foundation white or Griffin titanium white. When this is dry glaze on the local colors. When this is dry scumble and heighten using the same black, white, red, and yellow. Glaze and scumble again. Finish.
Imprimatura
Imprimatura is a term used in painting, meaning an initial stain of color painted on a ground. It provides a painter with a transparent toned ground, which will allow light falling onto the painting to reflect through the paint layers.
An imprimatura layer is usually made with an earth color, such as raw sienna, and is often diluted with turpentine.
- Imprimatura is the classical term for a semi transparent or transparent color layer used to create a toned ground for a painting. It literally means "what goes before first.".
- Imprimatura acts as harmonizing element for all upper color layers if they are laid according to the laws of the classical technique allowing the imprimatura to show through in certain places.
- It also determines an overall darkness (or lightness) of the composition.
- The advantage of an imprimatura over a toned gesso or a toned primer is that the white ground reflects the light through the imprimatura and upper semi-transparent layers, creating almost a magical 3-dimensional illusion.
- The color of an imprimatura depends on the lighting source in the composition you are going to paint and the subject.
- If we would consider a raw umber to be a neutral color for imprimatura, then you may want to go to a warmer or cooler sides by mixing yellow ochre with bone black in different proportions.
- Never choose the darkness of this layer by mechanically picking 50% grey tone.
- You always can put the second layer or add darker tones during your next step - shadows study.
Azuraccio - Blue Underpainting, Used for Landscapes
At Value 2 combine 3 parts Cerulean Blue with 2 parts Ultramarine Blue and 1 part Mars black. . Add 50% of the value 2 mixture with 50% Mars black at Value 1. Values 3 through 9 are gradually lightened with flake white with a 10% value change between each number.
Don't be afraid to experiment with warm and cool underpainting colors. I don't think anyone told Vermeer or Rembrandt that they had the wrong color of underpainting. They experimented and found what worked for them, in order to achieve their desired outcome. You can do the same.