underdraw

present singular third person underdraws · participle present underdrawing · past underdrew · participle past underdrawn

1. transitiveTo cover or line the underside of (a floor or roof) with plasterwork, boarding or other such treatment.

   The [roof] had never been underdrawn, its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes, and clusters of legs of beef, mutton and ham, concealed it.

   1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter I, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 6

   1 more example

   He has the whole of the room underdrawn, with the exception of two bays at one end; he admits plenty of air by the windows in the roof into the triangular shaped space formed by the roof and the underdrawing;

   1876, Great Britain. HM Factory Inspectorate, Factories and Workshops, page 37

2. To take or draw less than one needs or is entitled to.

   You say for month and months you had been underdrawing? — Always underdrawing and giving up every month. Whatever we drew the officer signed an indent for and we gave up a surplus.

   1906, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers: 1850-1908 - Volume 57

3. transitiveTo represent inadequately in an artistic depiction, or in words.
4. To sketch a work of art in chalk, pencil, or other temporary medium prior to painting, inking, or otherwise making the final work.

   Here was the warrant (or at least a justification) not just for Steig's drawings of people as bodily symptoms but, more important, for his abandoning underdrawing in pencil prepartory to inking in a drawing.

   2005, Iain Topliss, The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams and Saul Steinberg, page 108