It’s week 3 at school this week, and we are well underway with our final pieces. This term is a little different to others, in that we are to paint only from sketches painted prior.

My piece itself is larger than I would have liked to be working on – 61x91cm. After over-committing size-wise to the giant chips project, I thought I could use a break. Oh well! Good thing we’ve got 8 weeks to do it.

I first started with a black and solvent underpainting, before further refining it in to a grisaille underpainting of higher definition. I’ve never spent more than a week on an underpainting, so I wanted to give this a go to see how it would affect the final piece.

I chose a grisaille underpainting also because the overall tone of the finished piece is quite muted, so by starting off with a grey underpainting, that’ll give the mute-ness a head start!