Underpainting

In painting one should always have their eye on the final layer.

Everything you do from the very first thumbnail should be to facilitate the final piece. The end goal. That perfect image you had in mind from the very first time you put pencil to paper.

Unfortunately it doesn't always work out that way. For instance, you might find yourself laboring away at your work for hours, days, weeks, or dare I say months ending up nowhere near where you started but still not any closer to finish. Needless to say we all stray from our planned path at times but that doesn't mean we won't end up exactly where we need to be in the end. Sometimes it requires a simple course correct and sometimes you've just got to wade through the mud. Either way, everything you put down is just the underpainting for what comes next.

The underpainting is your foundation. It will inform every decision you make throughout the process. It is where you can make your mistakes, take risks, or just play around.

Even when you look back at what you did and say... "nope, should of done this instead. This would have gotten me there quicker"... realize that you had to make those mistakes and take those risks to have found that out.

Could it have been easier? Yes, and you know that now.

So when you work and you work and all you can see is the underpainting, just know that it's all building up to the finish. In the end it will only make your painting that much richer, that much more involved; and you can always look forward to the moments where your earliest underpainting still shines through. Those moments where you know you got it right in the first pass, where you took a big risk and it just worked. The moments that stood up to all the scrutiny that everything else didn't, because even finished isn't really finished sometimes.