Towards the Beach: Drawing Layout

Once the basic concept sketch is laid out, the next phase is to prime the canvas and "draw" out the basic shapes. In this case, you are not worrying about colors, value, etc. You are making sure that, showing the basic shapes, the scene is still recognizable.

Since I wanted this to be a little darker than my normal paintings, I've primed the canvas with a bluish-grey mix of white, Cerulean Blue, and Indigo Black. Mixing a light amount of Liquin into the painting helped cover the canvas and produced a thin paint layer (Remember... thick over thin to prevent cracking in the future).

The other benefit of priming the canvas is so that you don't get white speckled dots on the final painting. With the color laid over later, the white of the canvas should not be seen.

Now that the canvas has been primed, I refer to my reference sketch and "draw" on the canvas using a brush and Terra Rosa. I can adjust the shapes/drawing because I know that the final drawing will be overlaid by the painting, itself. It just gives me a guide to know how to layout my colors.