Welcome to my Blog.
Today's Discussion (Acrylic) is why I almost always paint my canvas gray before starting a painting on it.
Well, almost always. And when I do not I always regret it. Yep, there you go. Chasing the white dots as I call it. Here is what I have found. Acrylic shrinks as it dries. Ever so slight but enough that it opens tiny holes that the light from the white gesso canvas shows through. Think of it like stars in the night sky.
Now, the problem with that is that going back and dotting out these little spots requires paint mixed in that exact color and value. And I mix paint as I go through a painting. In the end, my pallet is a hot mess. Even if I have some paint that I can identify as the same color and value, it has long since dried on my pallet. (And yes, I do use a stay-wet pallet.) But it still happens.
Painting a canvas gray works best for me. Gray is neutral and mid-value. And yes the little dots are still there but really hard to spot them even up close, as gray beside a color is just really hard to see.
In oil painting, which is a media that at present I do not use, the painting of the entire canvas is called the underpainting I think, and it tones the canvas making the painting carry that tone. For example, many oil portrait painters that I have seen paint their canvas brown or a burnt umber color to give the painting a warm tone.
Do I always use gray? No, there is no set rule for me. If I am painting a scene and the sky is mostly blue and the foreground is green, then I paint the entire background, let the paint dry on the canvas, and give it a second or third coat. This usually hides the little white dots that would occur. But each and every time I just start painting detail on a white gesso canvas I end up regretting it.
Sketching over gray. After painting my canvas gray and letting it set and dry, or using a hair dryer to dry it, I then go back with a white acrylic marker to do my sketching, or if I am using transfer paper, I use white transfer paper to get my sketch onto the canvas. I can also use an acrylic black pen and that also seems to work for me.
Hope this helps.
