Someone asked me the other day about how I put down a ground. It actually took me a while to figure out a way to do this that worked for me, so I thought I'd share in case any of you reading this are struggling with the same thing.
First I choose a color. Usually it's the compliment of the dominant color in the painting. Sometimes I feel like it should be something else...but I can't really explain why, so... In this case I used yellow...mostly because the brightest parts of the pears are yellowish and I didn't want that to get muddy. Then I turp down some of that color and spread it over the panel. Then I take a paper towel and REALLY wipe it off. The color will kind of stain the panel and the paper towel will even it out and take off most of the moisture.
There are 2 reasons I do this: because sometimes it's fun to leave little bits of the undercolor showing, and because getting the panel a little wet helps with the spreading of the thicker paint I put on next. Sometimes I'll have a panel that's had a few bad paintings wiped off, and it's dried so the undercolor is dark and dry. This gives you a kind of fun look with the dark showing through, especially if you're doing a light painting (ex. "fuzzy pears"), or gives you darker darks for a dark painting. You could even put down a dark ground on purpose (imagine that) and let it dry a day for the same effect.
