From the article: Painting on Colored Grounds
What colors have you used for grounds in your paintings? What color(s) do you use most often and why do you like using these? Share your experiences, tips, and preferences on using colored grounds here. What Grounds Do You Use?
Colored Grounds
- Most often I use a midtone grey blue for my portraits but I also like to use a medium deep magenta for pastels paintings. Even though it is hard to work with in the beginning the glow in the end result is glowing. I start off with three hard pastels -- light, medium and dark brown -- and make a light underpainting first before going on to color. I also like to use a bright golden underpainting for landscapes that gives the finished painting a glow.
- —Guest Johanne Beerbaum
Most Everything
- I use the white of the paper or reserve with gouache, but I use a colored ground for my acrylics on canvas. Thinking about it I have used almost everything. Red, magenta, blue, green, yellow, and purple. If you like extra tooth, or you just want an extra gesso layer, it's fun to add a few drops of color to clear acrylic gesso, and put that on top of the white. Or you can draw in pencils, charcoal or pastel, lightly fix it and then use the tinted clear gesso over it. I also like to add color to a mix of gloss medium and airbrush medium.
- —edsmiley
Colors for Grounds
- Carmine for landscapes which are predominantly green; black for cityscapes and paintings that will have cool bias.
- —Guest Edgar Coudal
Ground Color
- Yellow ochre or cobalt blue are my favourite ground colors.
- —wafaa.md
Ground Colour
- Normally I use burnt sienna for ground, however when cloud shadows or tree shadows blue is quiet suitable.
- —Guest cvramana
Mellow Yellow and Light Pink
- My favorite grounds are yellow ochre and a lightened wash of alizarin crimson. I have used a lot of different grounds, even using the neutrals from a left over pallet. I hate painting on a white canvas and will do almost anything to avoid that. I do think certain backgrounds or grounds add to the richness of a painting. I have found landscapes especially respond to either yellow ochre (where I am having a lot of sky) and the alizarin crimson (where I am having more green or water).
- —StarrpointHost01
Orange and Raw Sienna Ground
- Most often my paintings are typically blue and green, a bright contrasting ground can darken where over painting is transparent or provide bright flashes of contrasting color for interest relief.
- —jrjarvis
It all Depends
- I use different color grounds for different paintings. If I'm doing portraits I'll use a pale wash of raw umber that will be used for the mid tone of my value painting. For other paintings I'll use the lightest color of whatever is in the subject I'm painting. Other times I've used burnt sienna or raw sienna. If I'm eager to get painting I just might leave the canvas white and go from there.
- —Guest papaya
Complementary Colours
- I have just finished a painting of flowers (camelias and daffs ) in acrylics using complementaries as an underpainting. Quite a struggle in places but I think it works.
- —Guest ultramarine
White is NOT my Cup of Tea
- Most of my canvases are toned with yellow ochre or 'washed out burnt sienna (mixed in with the last layer of gesso), but I have been using ANY color from my old acrylic paints that shows signs of never being used up otherwise. I love a nice cadmium red for my landscapes - it's terrific under skies and all foliage. I tone (with gesso mixed in) and underpaint with acrylics, then use oils ... so I find really dark toning such as black, dark grays and dark browns, purple and dark blues may dictate how thick I must apply lower layers of oils (and how many layers I ultimately need) - so I tend to stay away from super dark. That said I once did a wonderful double portrait using a black gessoed base ... but it WAS more work! My suggestion to new painters would be to consider staying with "earthy" tones - middle of the road colors. For sure get rid of the white right away! When you apply your toning try to create a mottled coverage rather than a smooth all one tone.
- —Guest Janet D
Bright Orange Gesso Coloring
- A workshop instructor had us color the gesso, bright orange to prepare the canvas. This seemed to brighten all the acrylic paint applied to the finished piece, almost like a glow.
- —Guest wiltonnelson
Take Away the White
- I almost never paint on a white canvas, and I much prefer colored paper for drawing, or toned paper. I will either tone the canvas yellow ochre or pale Alizarin Crimson, especially a landscape. I think it gives much a much richer sky. Underpainting, either by toning the canvas, or a value study makes the surface colors richer. On a still life I many times block it in in complementary colors. Doing this does enhance the final colors, making them richer without having the unnaturally jump off the canvas.
- —StarrpointHost01
Ground color
- Burnt umber primarily. Comes closest to the 'color' of a wooden palette. What you see mixed on the palette will be close to what you see on the canvas. Have used other earth colors at times, but try to stick to tone of palette.
- —rghirardi
What Color Ground?
- Metallic Gold. It was for a class where we were doing a sunset landscape painting. Turned out great!
- —Guest Garden Goddess
