How to Build a Stretcher Bar Frame and Stretch your Canvas
How to Gesso Your Canvas Or Panel
Composition 101
Beginning Your Drawings
Drawing Technique Chart & Video Tutorials
Acrylic Painting Techniques Chart & Video Tutorial
Underpainting Information
Why Bother with an Underpainting?
I found the following images on Anne Kullaf's Blog Loosen Up. It is an excellent example of underpainting and the development of a painting.
This first image shows an incomplete underpainting that resolves issues of proportion and begins to address value. This underpainting was done using a tinted ground (gesso and some light red ochre) and burnt umber. The values are beginning to be established by the use of washes to block in medium and light values and an undiluted application will block in the darker values.
Notice in this slide the underpainting is blocking in the rest of the background information. Underpaintings are meant to establish a firm structure for your painting but do not need to be resolved and finished in the same way that a finished painting is finished. Notice how loose and gestural the figures and marks are.