The ground is the prepared surface on which a picture is made — the primed canvas, the toned panel, the sized paper, the underpainted base — and, by extension, the colour of that surface where it shows through.
A ground can be white (most modern primed canvas), warm (the brown or red bole of many old-master pictures), cool (a grey or blue toned ground), or coloured to a specific hue chosen to play against the picture above it. The ground colour shows in negative spaces, in scumbled passages, in the spaces between marks, and it conditions every colour laid over it — a yellow ochre stroke reads differently on a grey ground than on a red one. Description that mentions the ground is usually noting that the underlying surface is doing visible work in the finished image, not just supporting it.
See also
- figure-ground — the perceptual relation that uses the same word
- wash — the layer that often stains directly into the ground
- tonality — the overall tonal cast the ground sets