Iris – Underpainting: Oil Based Glaze for a Wet-on-Wet Painting Foundation
The underdrawings help you to see where you are going – it’s the structure, its a point of reference. This flat line drawing comes alive with the overlaying brushstrokes. These brushstrokes are still within the foundation. For one layer upon layer, where they interact and interact with one another

The underpainting is the prelude to things to come. All the sketches, studies, and preliminary drawings are the practice, rehearsal, and dress rehearsal so as to paint from the inside out.

The drawing before me on the canvas, and the way the surface is going allow for the finishing brushwork to be fired against.

This initial layer services both the scientific and poetic requirements and is the base for subsequent layers. It is set up for promoting volume and substance. Part of this is to build for more competent image poetry.

Studio work is still sense based where one uses illuminated memory, offering the passion to illustrate the brushstrokes.

Use varying amounts of charge (paint on the brush) for a multi-tonal and multivolume paint application, to help capture the light and darkness in the work. See how I spin the brush in using north, south, east, west, push and pull in a multi-directional fashion… see a marbleized colored brush…. use various pressures – he aware of the feel of the hand – all this is becoming your signature brushstrokes. Your artistic DNA is to be as unique as your fingerprint.

This composition all came from one flower stem. It's not how it looks but how it feels in order to create a narrative leading to an abstracted concept…one is dancing in and out of these two poles. Be lost in the moment, play in the color while your dancing brush moves.

Practice: Keep the palette from a distance, to force yourself to stand back. Impressionists use optical mixing, its in the look and feel of being mixed at a distance, while close up the work looks expressive and abstract.

The details of the textures, the lovely of the folding of the petals… all that prelude is the key to success.