First Steps–The Portrait’s Underpainting

For me, every painting starts with a first, rough underpainting. And when that goes well, I know the rest of the painting is going to go well too. This painting is starting off that way–you can see a resemblance to the Jack Russell right away–and even with no real dark tones, it already is starting to feel a bit three dimensional.

I use big brushes and rough patches of color for this–and I work fast. There will be lots of time later to get detailed with all those tiny brush strokes.