Conversations in Avian Art and Ornithology

My first glazing layer, known as the under painting, is one of my most important layers.  Since I am trying to keep the painting mostly transparent, the lines in my sketch become important.  As I apply the thinned oil paint I need to identify which edges will be hard or soft.  With hard edges I can leave the pencil line visible to help define the edge.  If I plan to cover a line with dark values or opaque paint, then I can let it stay.  If the area will be light in value or I want the edges to be soft and well blended then I need to get rid of the pencil line.

I will sometimes erase the pencil line before I apply paint.  Once a layer of paint has been applied it is hard to erase the line. 

In this example I used my diluting media, Liquin, without pigment to apply the first glaze.  Notice the Liquin mixes with the graphite to make gray.  Compare the initial tracing in the image on the left to the partially worked center image.  Then see the end result in the image on the right.

1. Hard edge is maintained by lightly going over the line with Liquin and letting it dry.  This is good to keep the well defined feather edges.

2. Vanishing edges are mixed with the Liquin on both sides of the line equally.  A little scrubbing with the brush helps lift the graphite.

3. For light areas I do not like to have a defined line of graphite, so I scrub it out only on the dark side of the image leaving the light side to remain bright.

4. To produce a very light line I will either partially erase the line before I start painting or scrub it out on both sides and lift the muddied Liquin off the canvas.

5. I roughed up the lines of the feathers with my brush by mixing the graphite line with the Liquin to produce a soft edge.  I will also use the graphite gray as a glazing layer.  Notice that I had to add transparent white to lighten some of the edges since that area became too dark with graphite.

The under painting helps to establish the values of a painting and thus builds form and composition.  I usually start with either red, blue or yellow diluted with Liquin, but sometimes just Liquin works well.  After this layer dries, then I can start adding the other layers of glazes where they are needed to produce the painting.