This week, I’d like to share five of my best tips fro drawing an umber underdrawing with colored pencils. If you’re not sure why you would want to start a new drawing with an umber underdrawing, check out this post first. Then come back for the tips.
Tips for Drawing an Umber Underdrawing
Tip #1: The Color of the Paper You Choose
Most of the time, you want to choose white paper if you’re planning to start with an umber underdrawing. That’s because white paper has the least affect on the colors you use. Brown on the paper will look pretty much like the brown of the pencil.
However, there are times when using colored paper can make the drawing process shorter. This is the finished umber underdrawing for a landscape I completed a few years ago.
The lighting in the reference was gray because the sky was cloudy, and that gray, flat light was part of the appeal for me. So rather than using white paper, I used Stonehenge Pearl Grey. It looks browner in the scans that it was in real life, but my point is the same.
Starting out with a toned paper can help you develop you underdrawing more quickly.
Tip #2: The Color of the Pencil You Choose
The color and value of the pencil you choose for the umber underdrawing is also important. You want a color that’s light enough to allow you to draw very light values. But it also needs to be dark enough to draw darker values, too.
What colors do I use? Most of the time, I use Prismacolor Light Umber because it’s dark enough to produce nice dark values, but it isn’t so dark that I have problems creating light values. If I need something darker, I add Prismacolor Dark Umber.
Light Umber is the second pencil from the top in the photo below. It’s my go-to color for umber underdrawings.
Dark Umber is the middle pencil and Dark Brown is second from the bottom. I sometimes use both of those colors for darker values. The bottom pencil is Sepia and the top pencil is probably Bronze. I don’t use either one for umber underdrawings. Bronze is too yellow for my taste, and Sepia is too blue.
However, you could use any of these colors or similar colors in other brands for umber underdrawings.
The brand of pencil doesn’t matter as much as the color and value of the pencil, so find a shade of brown that’s a medium value, and you should be fine.
Tip #3: Start with Light Pressure
It’s vital to begin layering with light pressure. The lighter the pressure when you begin, the more gradually you can develop detail without filling in the tooth of the paper. This is especially important if you use a smooth paper.
Tip #4: You Don’t Need Tight Detail in the Underdrawing
A lot of artists who do umber underpaintings with oils do develop a high degree of detail. Since colored pencils are so difficult to correct if you make a mistake, it seems like developing high detail in the underdrawing phase is a good idea.
And for some artists it is.
But as you can see from the finished landscape underdrawing at the beginning of this post and the finished horse underdrawing here, I don’t always include a lot of fine detail in my underdrawings.
In both cases, there’s enough detail to provide a clear roadmap for color application, but neither underdrawing looks like a complete work of art.
Find the level of detail that works for you and create it in your umber underdrawing.
Tip #5: Don’t Go Too Dark when Drawing the Umber Underdrawing
It’s important that you not make the dark values too dark in the underdrawing. Every color you layer over the underdrawing will make the values darker. So if the darkest values in the umber underdrawing start out too dark when you start with color, they will be much too dark by the time you finish.
Let’s look again at the landscape. See those dark shadows under the trees? They could be a lot darker if I wanted to make them darker. But that would have made it difficult to tint the shadows with color to make them look like the finished drawing below.
There are 5 Tips for Drawing an Underdrawing
There’s a lot more to creating a solid umber underdrawing than just these five things. But in my experience, these are the five more important things to get right.
As with most things in life and all things in art, it’s all about finding the method that works best for you, then fine-tuning that method until you consistently produce the kind of art you want to produce.
By the way, the landscape drawing I used in this post was documented step-by-step as I created it. That means I can expand on this topic with a full-length tutorial or in-depth artist’s journal.
Are You Looking for More In-Depth Tutorials?
I’ve published many tutorials on a variety of subjects and for many skill levels. Check out the tutorials here.
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I learned underpainting from a nun when I was 10 or 11 yo in boarding school, in my mind, it was just for oil still life.
In the 70’s when I switch to acrylic I tried underpainting and loved it because the media dries fast, I did not have to wait like with oil. I used it more but never did it cross my mind that you can use it for landscape (my favorites) and with color pencils!
I followed your tuto and loved it again it easier to view where my drawing is taking me than going right to color pencils I use Verithins for it because of the possibility to erase, my second best tool ;(
Thank you again for your tutorial I really enjoy it and it helped me a lot.I lean so much from you.
Thank you so much for this tutorial, Carrie! I tried under painting for the first time – using lighter colors – in my latest piece. It made all the difference in the world, in being able to follow what I was doing, as well as a richer-toned final result.
Belinda,
Thank you for reading this tutorial and thank you especially for your very kind words.
Glazing color over an umber under drawing is one the best ways I know to get realistic landscape greens and to work out values that I’ve ever used. I started using in with oil painting, and find it equally useful for colored pencil work. I’m delighted it was helpful to you, as well.
What colors did you chose for your umber under drawing?
Carrie