Underpainting

Simple Still Life

I'm really not a fan of watercolor underpainting.  But just for the fun of it, in class this morning, we painted a light wash of the primaries on our papers, and then painted a simple still life over it.  It's just kind of fun and challenging to figure out what to paint over and around to make it work with the underpainting.  I wish I had taken pictures of the paintings the class did  -  they were great.

If you plan out your composition and paint the underpainting accordingly, you have a better chance of leaving some whites.   We just painted our wash of primaries, and then drew the still life, working with whatever wash we had. 

It isn't the underpainting's fault that the yellow pitcher is a little wonky.