M. Pia De Girolamo

Reef     22 x 30      Acrylic on Arches Watercolor Paper

Recently when starting a new painting I have been applying a colored ground,  usually in a modified red or yellow shade, to the fresh canvas.  In the new series of paintings I’ve been working on,  I started with raw canvas but rather than using white gesso to prime it I applied a ground of clear gesso tinted with Naples Yellow.

The ground can function to warm up or cool down a painting as it alters the colors placed above it. For me the ground can also set the emotional tone for a piece.  Historically, use of a ground and underpainting was the rule rather than the exception and a variety of colors such as grey, beige, yellow ochre and vermilion was employed during different periods and by different artists.

Sometimes I include a lot of the ground color in the final painting, keeping the color going through subsequent transparent layers (as in the photo above). Other times I paint on top of the ground in more opaque layers and sometimes gouge, scrape or sand a layer to let the ground show through.

I just came back from Hawaii with strong images of sand, sea, sky. It seemed appropriate to prep my canvases with the Naples Yellow, an ochre-type yellow, recalling the warmth and light of the tropics, their mystery and perhaps a touch of sadness as well.  The yellow would mix with blues to make a tropical blue-green, soften violet hues and mellow out reds. 

Laying a ground color in is another way to get the painting process started. You commit to a color and then watch what happens “from the ground up”!