Welcome to
The Painting Lesson
by Linda Carson
big black pig studio
98 King St. N., Waterloo Ontario Canada
www.bigblackpig.com
Painting "en grisaille"
To paint "en grisaille" is to paint in a limited palette: high-key (that is, light in value) and monochrome (that is, all one colour, usually gray).
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For example: A grisaille looks a bit like an over-exposed black-and-white photograph. |
Don't like the look? That's okay. Grisaille is most commonly used as an underpainting (a foundation layer of the painting that will be covered and altered by subsequent layers of paint). In nineteenth century Paris, for example, the Ecole Des Beaux Arts promoted a style where colour was applied in layers of thin oil glazes over a grisaille. The painter could resolve the drawing in monochrome before worrying about colour challenges. By the way, that's why a grisaille is typically done with high-key (light-valued) paints: so that the glazes added later will be visible. If you painted a grisaille with darker grays, it would be much harder to see any colours layered on top.
Back to the main lesson?Art & Text (C) Linda Carson 2002
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