Somewhere Under the Rainbow

Sep 13

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Hey folks, I’m officially back from time off.

Lot’s of people asking how the vacation went… ehhhhh… let’s not call it a vacation as this may jinx the next one I try to take.

Mr. Amy spent my vacation in the hospital which means I know the cafeteria menu by heart now.

Not what we planned but c’est la vie.

He’s feeling much better but I’m back on daily clinic shuttle service. Hooray.

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NEW AT YOUTUBE

Today’s article adds to the lesson in my latest video.

Please watch this first.

SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW

Okay, so you’ve seen the video and you’ve decided to give this underpainting stuff a try…

Let’s talk about the all time, hands down, best marker investment you’ll ever make.

Give me the BV-Twenty series of markers and I can underpaint anything.

Any. Thing.

In the video, you see me underpaint every color of the rainbow with this series. I underpainted red, orange, yellow, beige, pink, violet, and blue. They do it all.

Yes, you could use Cool, Neutral, or even Toner grays under the rainbow. Avoid the Warm grays, they’re less versatile and not easy for beginners.

So yes, grays will work… but honestly, there’s something extra special and almost magical about underpainting with the BV-Twenties.

The look is more sophisticated and artistic than plain ol’ gray.

Do you need the whole set?

Yes. We can’t underpaint everything with the same marker. For example, BV23 is too dark to go underneath most yellows and it’s not dark enough to shade most blues and violets. You’ll need a range of values to lighten or darken your underpaint based on the value of the color about to go over it.

If you want to skip one, that’d be BV29. Don’t get me wrong, I use BV29 a lot but you might not. Many of you stick to medium and light color palettes so you just won’t need an underpaint this dark. BV29 creates blackened dark colors, like red-black or greenish-black.

Why is there a light blue and a cool gray in this set?

We need lighter underpaint under lighter colors and yellow. Ol’ yeller is such a wimp that even dark yellows need a light underpaint.

BV20 is a bit too dark for any marker ending lower than a 2.

B60 has a similar cool blue-gray feel. It underpaints markers ending in 1 or some 0’s.

C00 feels like the next lightest blue-gray and it can underpaint your 00’s, 000’s, and 0000’s.

How do I know which BV-Twenty to use?

Try ‘em out, silly! I keep scrap paper by my side as I color. I test all my underpaints before using them. Even if I think I know what’ll work, I still swatch to make sure.

And no, this is not an excuse to make some stupid book full of underpaint swatches. Every project is different and your 2 year old swatch is useless for today’s colors. Just test it and throw it away when you’re done. Stop making swatch books, okay?

But what am I looking for?

Lucky for you, I have a whole series of livestreams showing my test process. The videos with “swatching” in the title show the testing, the others show how I use them.

Nooooooo! BV under orange looks really ugly!

Uhm, yeah. That’s the point. Real shade is really ugly. If it’s pretty, it ain’t shady enough.