Are you a beginner and having trouble understanding which colors to use for your palette? You always have doubts on how to mix colors to achieve the desired color? When you mix colors you always get muddy colors?

This is the first of a series of articles about color mixing, where I will try to explain how I mix colors and how to mix the color you need.

On this blog I have already talked about color mixing. I explained what a color is and the concepts of hue, value and saturation. I have already talked about primary, secondary and complementary colors, so it’s time to explain how to mix them.

In the article 4 Basic Palette for Color Mixing I suggest to beginners 4 palette for start with. The idea is to start from a simple palette with only three colors plus black and white and then add progressively more colors as soon the experience increase. In this articles series I will explain how to mix colors using these four basic palettes.

In order to mix whatever color I want I usually follow these 4 basic steps:

1. Observe. This seems the most obvious steps, but it usually is underestimated. Observe a color and be able to describe it in terms of hue, tone and saturation is the most difficult thing because the eye is often deceived. The surrounding colors affect our evaluation and to demonstrate this is sufficient to observe the following cube.
   Photo http://neurophy.wordpress.com
   The colors of the squares in the center of the top and front faces look different but are actually the same color (see second figure). To avoid being deceived is always good to isolate the color you want to imitate. A useful tool is a white or black cardboard with a small hole through which to observe the color. The color must be isolated in order to describe it in terms of hue, tone and saturation. To do so is certainly useful to ask the 4 questions:
   1. What is the color hue? The possible answers are: yellow, orange, red, purple, blue and green.
   2. What is his tone? The possible answers are: light, dark or medium.
   3. What is his intensity? The possible answers are: high intensity, medium-intensity or low intensity.
   4. What is the exact color temperature? If to the first question you answered “yellow” look at the color to understand if the color tends more to the green or red.
2. Select. The second step is to select from the palette the color that is closest to the one to imitate. This color will be the starting point for our mixing. Once you answered to the 4 questions above you have a description of the color to imitate in terms of hue, tone and saturation and choose the tube of color that is closest to it is quite simple.
3. Analyze. At this stage you need to understand if our color is warmer or cooler, lighter or darker or more intense or less intense than the color to imitate. Based on this comparison you will make the appropriate color changes.
4. Modify. If the color is cooler than the one to imitate make it warmer. A similar thing if the color is warmer, lighter, darker, more intense or less intense. I have to repeat steps 3 and 4 until we get a color closer to the one to imitate. The modify step requires the following sub steps:
   1. adjust the tone of the color if it is lighter or darker than the one to imitate;
   2. adjust the saturation (or intensity) of the color if it is more intense or less intense than the one to imitate;
   3. adjust the hue (or the temperature) of the color if it is warmer or cooler than the one to imitate;

The steps above are a logical learning process that must be practiced and, with experience, applied mechanically. In the next articles I will explain:

1. how to lighten or darker a color;
2. how to make a color more or less intense;
3. how to make c color warmer or cooler;

Finally, the last article will be about how to mix colors in practice. I will demonstrate how to mix colors about some simple objects like: tomato, leaf, lemon and grapes.

Are you a beginner painter and you do not know which colors to buy? Are you always confused whenever you have to choose the colors to paint your subject? The following article will show you which colors to use in your painting and how to build your own palette.

In the Primary, secondary and complementary colors article I defined what a primary color is. The primary colors are: red, yellow and blue. Reading whatever book you will find that mixing primary colors you can get whatever color. This is partly true and the reality is much more complex. However, the simplest palette you can use is the one composed by only primary colors. I call this palette Primary Colors Palette.

Primary Colors Palette

This palette is the simplest palette you can use. The advantage of this palette is that whatever color you mix, it will harmonize with others colors of your painting. However, when you go into a fine arts shop you will not find color tubes called “red”, “yellow” or “blue”. You will find very strange name like cadmium red light, alizarin crimson, cobalt blue, etc. You will find a lot of red, yellow and blue colors, so which colors you have to choose?

As red I suggest to buy alizarin crimson. As blue I suggest to buy ultramarine blue. Mixing these two colors you will get a beautiful purple. As yellow I suggest to buy cadmium yellow light. Do not buy the cadmium yellow medium and dark. Cadmium yellow light mixed with alizarin crimson give you a beautiful orange and mixed with ultramarine give you a beautiful green.

To complete the palette the white and black color are necessary in order to lighten and darker your colors. I suggest to buy titanium (or zinc) white and ivory black. Here the 5 color tubes of your first palette:

• Titanium white (or zinc)
  
• Ivory Black
  
• Alizarin Crimson
  
• Ultramarine Blue
  
• Cadmium Yellow Light
  

Using this palette you can mix secondary colors mixing the two adjacent primary colors.

From this palette, if you wish, you can exclude the black and replace it with a color called “bistro” which is a mixture of the three primary colors (ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow light).

Extended Primary Colors Palette

As your experience increase you can add to the previous palette more colors in order to:

• mix colors with more accuracy;
• mix more intense secondary colors;
• mix more colors.

This new palette, that I call Extended Primary Colors Palette, is composed by 6 colors. Two colors for each primary color: a warm and a cool version of that color. It includes the following colors:

• Cadmium Red Light (warm red)
  
• Alizarin Crimson (cool red)
  
• Cadmium Yellow Light (cool yellow)
  
• Indian Yellow (warm yellow)
  
• Ultramarine Blue (warm blue)
  
• Cobalt blue (cool blue)
  
• Titanium White (or zinc)
  
• Ivory Black
  

At the Primary Colors Palette we added three more colors: cadmium red light, cobalt blue and indian yellow. This new palette allows  mixing more intense secondary colors. You can mix a secondary color mixing the two adjacent primary colors as showed in the following figure.

This palette is used by many artists, even if you can find some variation such as the use of magenta instead of alizarin crimson, phtalo blue instead of ultramarine, and so on.

Primary and Secondary Colors Palette

When your experience increases even more, you can switch to a palette that includes also secondary colors. When you go into a fine art store to buy three secondary colors you could get into trouble because you will not find colors with name like “green”, “purple” and “orange”. You’ll find color tubes with bizarre names such as: cadmium orange, dioxazine purple and so on. The three secondary colors that I suggest to buy are: cadmium orange, dioxazine purple (or cobalt violet)  and cadmium green.

The question now is: if you can get the secondary colors by mixing two primary colors, why you have to buy these other colors?

The secondary colors sold by fine art shop usually are more intense than color you can get mixing two primary colors. The following figure, for example, shows how the use of cadmium orange allows mixing colors (area B) that you will never be able to mix with the use of only two primary colors.

Full Palette

When you have some practice with the kind of palette described above you can switch to a Full Palette which includes the so-called “earth colors”. These colors are less intense than colors seen so far. If the primary and secondary colors are located at the border of the color wheel, the “earth colors” are located at the internal. Here are a list of frequently used earth colors:

• Raw Umber
  
• Burnt Umber
  
• Yellow Ocher
  
• Raw Sienna
  
• Burnt Sienna
  
• Venetian Red
• Sap Green
  

The following figure shows a top view of the color wheel and the position of the pigments mentioned so far.

You’ll notice that we have lot of pigments on yellow-orange spectrum than in blue-violet one. The reason is that human eye is more sensitive in the former spectrum range than the latter. The colors and palettes suggested in this article must be used as a reference guide and they should be considered as a starting point to avoid the confusion that most beginner painters have.

John Howard Sanden is an American portrait painter member of the famous Portrait Institute, an organization that originally held an annual conference for 5 days on the portrait. From the artist’s website you can see his works, honors received, customers, and other information. It’s interesting to read how the artist has been selected by the staff of the White House to paint the portrait of the 43 rd U.S. President George W. Bush.

The following is a picture where the artist poses in one of his studies. The red arrow indicates a cabinet used by the artist as a palette. Basically, the cabinet has a base, two drawers to store the colors and brushes, a white plane with over a glass that the artist uses as a palette. It’s possible to observe how on the side is placed a paper towel. The plane beneath the glass is white because the artist does not use toned backgrounds on his canvases, but he works directly on the prepared white canvas. The easel seems designed to hold large canvases.

Photo from http://www.portraitinstitute.com

Among the materials he uses there are: oil of cloves, Sphinx Retouch varnish, dammar varnish, fixative, retouching varnish in spray, container for 3 different painting knives, brushes, and then the color palette. He uses bristle brushes of different sizes (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12), fan bristle brushes of different sizes (2, 4 and 6), flat sable brushes of different sizes (2, 4 and 6), round sable brushes of different sizes (6, 8, and 12) and cat tongue sable brushes of different sizes (4, 6, 8, 10, and 12).

Photo from http://www.portraitinstitute.com

Among these materials the most interesting is the palette colors used for flesh tones called also Promix Color System (**). This palette comes from the lessons of his teacher Samuel Edmund Oppenheim, at the Art Students League of New York. In his method Oppenheim premixed 10 basic colors from which he mixed the color spectrum necessary to paint a portrait. Some years later John asked to the Martin / F. Weber Company of Philadelphia to produce these premixed basic colors in order to:

• reduce the portrait execution time;
• improve the accuracy;
• paint a portrait starting always from same mixtures

The John’s palette includes 13 standard colors: ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, viridian, chrome oxide green, raw umber, burnt umber, burnt sienna, cadmium orange, ivory black, white, cadmium red light, yellow ocher, cadmium yellow light. The palette in addition to these colors includes also the 10 premixed color for flesh tones reported above. As for standard colors the flesh colors should not be used as they come from the tube, but should be mixed with other colors in the palette to achieve the desired colors. These colors can be used for both Caucasians and African flesh tones. The idea is to have 3 colors for light skin tone, two halftones (one cold and one warm), and two dark for the shadows. You can buy these colors in whatever art store materials or you can mix them from yourself since the artist gives us the recipe to get them. Now let’s see one by one these flesh tones colors.

Light 1

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

Light 1 is the skin color of the highlight. The color strings shown here are divided into 3 parts: the left is the color in thick version, the center is thinner version and the right is color mixed with white. You can mix this color starting from the white, then add just a little of yellow ocher and hint of cadmium red light.

Light 2

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

This is the basic flesh color. You can get it mixing Light 1 and a touch of cerulean blue. As you can see, this is a classic formula for basic flesh tone: yellow ocher, cadmium red light, white and blue. The flesh color should have an orange hue this is the reason why you need to mix yellow ocher and cadmium red light. Since this mixture is too dark and intense you have to lighten it with white and reduce the intensity with blue (the orange’s complementary color).

Light 3

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

This color is a darker and reddish version of basic flesh color (Light 2) and it is used for red areas like nose, chin and cheeks. If you want to mix this color from yourself start from Light 2, then add a bit of cadmium red light and a touch of cerulean blue.

Halftone 1

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

This is the cool halftone used for planes that recede. In order to mix this color start from white that should be used in larger quantity than other colors. Add to white just a hint of yellow ocher and cadmium red light (the flesh tones basic colors). Make the mixture cooler adding viridian. You should get a cool olive color.

Halftone 2

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

This is the warm halftone used in areas where light and dark meet. In order to mix this color, start from white, then yellow ocher and a bit of cadmium red. Add to the mixture a touch of chrome oxide green and cadmium orange.

Dark 1

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

This is the first dark color mixed using burnt sienna and viridian. The color should be warm tone, so the mixture should contain more burnt sienna than viridian. Those color are almost opposite in the color wheel so the mixture should be a fairly neutral color. Add to the mixture a touch of orange cadmium to lighten the tone a make the mixture warmer. This is the main color for the shadow areas. For African faces this is the basic flesh tone.

Dark 2

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

Add to Dark 1 more burnt sienna and viridian and less cadmium orange. You will get a mixture for shadow darker than the previous one.

Neutral 3

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

John uses a gray scale composed by 9 tones, where white is tone 1 and black is 9. John uses 2 tones less than Frank Reilly and the numbering is reversed because the darker colors have higher value. This 9 tone are mixed using only 3 neutral colors plus black and white. For example, to mix Neutral 2 the artist mixes white and Neutral 3. All three neutral color are mixed using white, black and very little of yellow ocher.

Neutral 5

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com

See Neutral 3. It is mixed using white, black and very little of yellow ocher.

7 Neutral

Photo from http://www.dickblick.com
See Neutral 3. It is mixed using white, black and very little of yellow ocher.

In order to avoid wasting your time and improve the accuracy of these mixtures, you can buy online these 10 colors of Promix Color System (**). If you do not want spend money you can prepare them by yourself using the colors suggested in John recipes. The color of Promix Color System (**) should not be used as they come out from the tube otherwise all your portraits will be equal to each other. Each color must be adapted to the needs. For example, an area may require a lighter or darker version of Light 2; a warmer or colder version of Dark 1, or more intense or less intense than Light 3. In these cases the colors should be mixed in order to get the color you need.

What do you need to learn to paint a portrait like John Howard Sanden?

1. First of all, you need to know the color mixing method used by the artist. The method is not much different by Frank Reilly one and it is based on Munsell system. The innovation introduced by this artist was to apply the Munsell method to flesh colors using premixed colors.
2. Second, you need to be able to identify the facial planes and assign a color to each of it. The artist essentially divides the head into three parts: high, medium and low. The upper part is the part of the forehead. It’s an area more yellowish and with no pink areas. The middle part is the part that contains the eyes, nose and ears. In this area cheeks and nose are more reddish. The lower part is the part of the mouth and chin. It’s an area with cooler tones. All these three areas have  a light, middle tone and shadow sides depending on the facial planes and the direction of light. Recognize them is essential to be able to paint a portrait like John Howard Sanden.

If you want to learn how to use the Promix Color System (**) there are several videos and books you can buy.

Video

The artist produced several videos on portrait. I saw these two videos:

• Painting the Head in One Sitting II (Tessa). In the video the artist show his method to paint a portrait using wet on wet technique.
• Color Mixing for Portraiture. This video focuses on Promix Color System (**). It explain how to mix the flesh tones color by yourself and how to use them to get the color you want. John shows also his method to paint a portrait in oil.

Books

• Portrait from Life in 29 Steps (*). I bought this book and it was a good investment. Do not be fooled by the cover, that picture definitely does not appear in the book. But this is not a problem. The author in the first part explains the materials it uses. There is a chapter dedicated to portrait drawing. There is a chapter on color values. There are two chapters dedicated to the Promix Color System (**) and how to us his palette. There are several pages where he analyze some portraits to explain the 9 principles to make a good portrait (1 page for each principle). Finally, there are two projects of a Caucasian and an African portrait executed step by step. These projects are very detailed and rich of pictures.
• Painting the Head in Oil (*). This is another book on portrait in oils. I dot not have this book so I cannot give you feedback on it.
• Successful Portrait Painting (*). Like the previous book I can not give feedback because I have not read it.

Do you think this method will be useful to improve your portraits? Leave a comment and let me know your thought.

* Disclaimer: the links for the books are affiliate links and I do earn a commission through any purchases that you make. If you do make a purchase, I appreciate it! If you wish, send me an email so I can thank you personally.

** Disclaimer: the links for the Promix Color System Paint Oil Set is an affiliate links and I do earn a commission through any purchases that you make. If you do make a purchase, I appreciate it! If you wish, send me an email so I can thank you personally.

In the article about focal points and focal areas I underlined the importance of creating a center of interest in your artwork. The question that I want to answer in this article is the following: where to put the center of interest on your drawing sheet? One possible approach is the famous rule of thirds. Basically, given a rectangular sheet placed horizontally or vertically, I divide each side into three parts and join them as reported by the following figure.

Photo from http://www.williampolito.com

You can put the center of interest of your image in the intersection points of these segments (highlighted by circles). This is a simple composition rule that is a simplification of the famous golden section. This rule is also used in photography and the next time you go on vacation you can use it in your photos. It will be sufficient to decide what is most interesting area of ​​your subject and place it on the points mentioned above. Below I reported an example of image taken using this rule. Notice how the bow of the boat has been placed on the intersection at the bottom left.

Photo from http://www.smashandpeas.com

How create focal points and focal area in you drawing and painting? This article explain the basic principles to create them in your artwork and make them more interesting.

When a viewer looks at your painting his eyes will travel different paths on the canvas. Having the right knowledge you can ride through these paths as well as a GPS system guides you through the streets of a city you do not know. See the following figure.

In Figure 1 the eye wanders without reference points. In Figure 2 the dot in the bottom right is the focal point (or point of intrest). In Figure 3, the biggest dot in the lower right corner will have a higher precedence over the second dot, which in turn will have higher precedence than the farest. The arrows indicate the path that the viewer’s eye will make.

So, in a painting there may be more focal points linked together through an implicit or explicit path.

A focal point can also be a line, a complex object or even a region.

In Figure 4 the eyes go from the big house in the lower left corner to the small  house in the upper right corner. The road is the explicit path that helps the viewer’s eyes to go from a point of interest to another. The road, however, is too straight and the eye moves too quickly from a point of interest to another.

In the Figure 5 the problem is eliminated using a zig zag road. The new road allows to the viewer’s eyes a slower journey who will also have time to dwell on the tree between the two houses.

A further improvement has been done in Figure 6, where the road is located on different levels.

The principles reported in this articles come from the book Drawing Scenery: landscapes and seascapes (*). This book contains lot of info on ladnscapes composition and perspective. I suggest to read it if you love to draw and paint landscapes.

Credit: Drawing Scenery: landscapes and seascapes (*)

* Disclaimer: the links for the Drawing Scenery: landscapes and seascapes book are affiliate links and I do earn a commission through any purchases that you make. If you do make a purchase, I appreciate it! If you wish, send me an email so I can thank you personally.

Are your landscapes flat? Do you want to give them more depth? Learn what the aerial perspective is and how it can help you to paint better landscapes.
There are two types of perspective:

1. Linear perspective.
2. Aerial perspective.

On this blog I already talked about linear perspective. I explained what it is and I introduced the single point and two point perspective. But in order to give more depth to your landscapes you need to understand what aerial perspective is and how it can help you to paint better landscapes.

Here the definition of aerial perspective according to Wikipedia:

Aerial perspective or atmospheric perspective refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as it is viewed from a distance. As the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its background decreases, and the contrast of any markings or details within the object also decreases. The colors of the object also become less saturated and shift towards the background color, which is usually blue, but under some conditions may be some other color (for example, at sunrise or sunset distant colors may shift towards red).

From the Italian Wikipedia it is possible to read the following text that I translated for you:

According to the Leonardo’s studies, the air is denser close to the ground and it becomes more transparent with height. So, all tall landscapes elements, such as mountains, appear sharper in the higher parts.

In fact, in his Treatise on Painting Leonardo suggests to paint the mountains clear upon the hills than at the base. Who has had the opportunity to see Bob Ross videos, probably noticed that in his landscapes he always creates a more hazy towards the base of the mountains. Basically, he is merely applying the principle explained by Leonardo more centuries in advance.

Meanwhile, I list the things to remember when you apply the aerial perspective.

Tone shift toward background tone

On lots of websites you will find that tone increase (means become more clear) with distance. In most cases this is true because object tones in foreground are darker than background color (the sky) in a landscape. In general, this is not true because if you have a white object in the foreground its tone get darker with distance because background color (the sky) is darker than pure white. The rule is that tone shift to background color. The following figure shows this concept.

Saturation reduction

Color saturation reduces with distance. Usually objects colors are brilliant in the foreground and less intense in the background.

Hue shift toward background color

Color hue shift toward background (or ambient) color. In a landscape the background (or ambient) color is the sky color, so the object colors shift toward sky color (usually blue) with distance. The following figure shows the effects with two similar ships at different distances. As you can notice also hue contrast is reduced.

Photo from http://www.wetcanvas.com/ArtSchool/Hagan

Tone Contrast

Nearby objects have more contrasts in tone than distant objects. If you compare the light/dark contrast of the following three spheres you will notice that it is higher on the foreground sphere and lower in the distant one.

Sharpness

To give a greater sense of depth try to change the sharpness of your painted objects at different levels of depth. Generally, near objects are clearer than distant one.

Details

The attention to detail is different in the various painting planes. In the foreground objects are rich in details. These details gradually disappear with distance.

The definition of Verdaccio according to Wikipedia is the following:

Verdaccio is an Italian name for the mixture of black, white, and yellow pigments resulting in a grayish or yellowish (depending on the proportion) soft greenish brown. Verdaccio became integral part of fresco painting where this color is used for defining tonal values, creating complete monochromatic underpainting. Often architectural details in frescoes are left in Verdacchio without any additional color layers, best example is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where you can clearly see verdaccio underpainting left as is on all architectural details of the composition.

But reading the Cennino Cennini Craftsman’s Handbook you realize that the true color used by the ancient masters was slightly different. In the book, Cennini, explaining how to paint a youthful face gives us the exact manner of how this color was mixed by Giotto:

And let us suppose that in a day you have just one head to do, a youthful saint’s, like Our Most Holy Lady’s. When you have got the mortar of your plaster all smoothed down, take a little dish, a glazed one, for all your dishes should be glazed and tapered like a goblet of drinking glass, and they should have a good heavy base at the foot, to keep them steady so as not to spill the colors; take as much as a bean of well-ground ocher, the dark kind, for there are two kinds of ocher, light and dark: and if you have none of the dark, take some of the light. Put it into your little dish; take a little black, the size of a lentil; mix it with this ocher; take a little lime white, as much as a third of a bean; take as much light cinabrese as the tip of a penknife will hold; mix it up with the aforesaid colors all together in order, and get this color dripping wet with clear water, without any tempera. Make a fine pointed brush out of flexible, thin bristles, to fit into the quill of a goose feather; and with this brush indicate the face which you wish to do, remembering to divide the face into three parts, that is, the forehead, the nose, and the chin counting the mouth. And with your brush almost dry, gradually apply this color, known in Florence as verdaccio, and in Siena, as bazzeo.

So the color was composed of yellow ocher, a bit of black, white and a hint of red (cinabrese). As you can see the recipe includes red (the complementary of green) in order to reduce the mixture intensity. In addition, the recipe does not include any green as suggested by some artists.

But how do we know that this was the actual color used by Giotto?

I explained this many times on my Italian blog. Cennino Cennini learned to paint from Agnolo Gaddi, a Taddeo Gaddi’s son. Taddeo Gaddi was the son of Gaddo Gaddi, that with Cimabue was one of the patriarch of Italian art. Taddeo Gaddi was the Giotto’s pupil for 24 years. In fact Cennini says:

But you follow this method in everything which I shall teach you about painting: for Giotto, the great master, followed it. He had Taddeo Gaddi of Florence as his pupil for twenty-four years; and he was his godson. Taddeo had Agnolo, his son. Agnolo had me for twelve years; and so he started me on this method, by means of which Agnolo painted much more handsomely and freshly than Taddeo, his father, did.

In the procedure to achieve the youthful face of the underpainting, however Cennini also uses the earth green and white, and explains how to use them to make a good underpainting:

When you have got the shape of the face drawn in, and if it seems not to have come out the way you want it, in its proportions or in any other respect, you can undo it and repair it by rubbing over the plaster with the big bristle brush dipped in water. Then take a little terre-verte in another dish, well tinned out; and with a bristle brush, half squeezed out between the thumb and forefinger of your left hand, start shading under the chin, and mostly on the side where the face is to be darkest; and go on by shaping up the under side of the mouth; and the sides of the mouth; under the nose, and on the side under the eyebrows, especially in toward the nose; a little in the end of the eye toward the ear; and in this way you pick out the whole of the face and the hands, wherever flesh color is to come. Then take a pointed minever brush, and crisp up neatly all the outlines, nose, eyes, lips, and ears, with this verdaccio. There are some masters who, at this point, when the face is in this [p. 45] stage, take a little lime white, thinned with water; and very systematically pick out the prominences and reliefs of the countenance; then they put a little pink on the lips, and some “little apples” on the cheeks. Next they go over it with a little wash of thin flesh color; and it is all painted, except for touching in the reliefs afterward with a little white. It is a good system.

After drawing with a large bristle brush, with liquid earth green he started to define the dark: under the chin, under the lip of the mouth, into the gap of the two lips, under the base of the nose, under the eyelashes, the end of the eye and then all over the face. Then using the verdaccio he started with creating the chiaroscuro of the face. Then he used the white for light area. I believe that the different shades of green were made by diluting the verdaccio more or less. In oil painting I think you may choose to use white or medium to create different tones.

Since the objective of the article was the verdaccio not go well with the analysis of the text Cennini, hoping to have clarified what color is  verdaccio, how to mix it and how to use it for a portrait underpainting.

The verdaccio underpainting is the equivalent of the dead layers used by Flemish painters and it was used mainly in portrait painting. Some verdaccio painting is still visible in some unfinished Leonardo works, in many decorations of the Sistine Chapel and many other works.

If you want learn more on Renaissance techniques I suggest to read The Craftsman’s Handbook (*). You can buy it on Amazon or download from this website.

* Disclaimer: the last link for The Craftsman’s Handbook book is an affiliate links and I do earn a commission through any purchases that you make. If you do make a purchase, I appreciate it! If you wish, send me an email so I can thank you personally.