Underpainting: It's Like Underwear for Art

This painting involved a technique called underpainting. Some benefits of underpainting are:

• base colors can peak through the brushstrokes of the upper coat, providing visual interest or enhancement of the top color.
• colors beneath can create visual shades and highlights in the top color.

Essentially, paint is applied as a ground, before the final product is applied over it.

This often occurs inadvertently when painting walls. Shades of paint on a wall beneath make brush or roller strokes more visible, and may reflect a different color through the topcoat. Unless you want to feature the brushstrokes and the color beneath, as some finishes do, most people use primer or extra coats of paint to make them less visible.

The underpainting in this picture was yellow beneath the green, green beneath the red, and orange beneath the blue.