How To Choose Underpainting Pencil Colours

Choosing your underpainting colours can seem very confusing, but you need to take a step back - quite literally - from your reference photo. An underpainting should be a very general rendering of your whole drawing. It looks at the big shapes and general colours and values.

In short, an underpainting is a simplified version of the finished drawing with no details! Forget the fur, forget the little changes in colour and put a blur filter over your reference image. Pick out the darks, pick out the midtones and the very lightest areas. These are what you will create with a limited range of pencils to give you a basic 3D form with local colours. 

Examples of Underpaintings

Below, you can see examples of underpainting next to their finished drawings. See how the underpainting is a stripped-back version of the finished drawing? There are no surface details, the value range (from dark to light), is simplified and not as dynamic at this stage and the colours are also compressed. 

Underpainting Hacks

Struggling with underpainting is normal for beginners and will get easier with time. Something that can be helpful is to put a blur filter over your reference image or sit back from it. Both of these methods will obscure details and make it easier to 'see the bigger picture'. Look for areas of shadows and areas of midtone. Unless you have white fur on your subject (like above), you probably won't need really light values for your underpainting.

You can also create trial swatches to see how pencils will layer together and create an effect. This will tell you if you're on the right track or not. Be careful, however, as swatches only represent a small area in isolation and don't show you when areas look like together. Swatches are mainly useful to check pencils will show up on top of each other.