Step 5: Laying in Color for an Underpainting
When my sketch was ready, I used the Flat Blunt Short Stiff and the Flat Blunt Soft Medium to rough-in general color areas for the underpainting.
Using your sketch as a guide, begin blocking in your color areas. The Flat Blunt Short Stiff has a drier brush look, whereas the Flat Blunt Soft Medium lays in paint more smoothly. Use the presets in the Useful Dry Mixer Brush Combinations menu to choose Dry, Moist, or Wet color as needed. For fresh, pure color, use one of the Dry settings. For mixing new color with existing color on your image, use the Moist or Wet settings. You can see my rough underpainting in Figure 14.
Figure 14 In this example of the underpainting, the basic colors are painted.