Underpainting example

[Tito Champena]

Hi, Karin.

I'm replying to your old (May 2002) demostration of an underpainting. I must say that you made a beautiful monochromatic painting of the dog. I was following very closely the description of your procedure because I'm interested in learning your technique. However, I got confused when you said that value #4 for the background was the same value #3 for the light on the dog. Why did you duplicate value #3 and #4 instead of mixing only one value for either the light on the dog or the background?

Then you said that you added value #4 as a highlight in the general light area of the dog which is value #3, however values #3 and #4 are the same.

Then you continued saying that the highlight value #2 was spreaded thickly on the general light area of the dog, but value #2 is supposed to be a dark for the shadow.

Fnally, you said that value #4 was used for the general light on the cloth and value #3 as the general shadow, how can this be if both values are the same?

I'm sure you might have gotten involuntarily confused with the numbers, I'm trying to get it right because I want to use it in one of my paintings.