Practicing for Grisailles

 Here are some practices you can do to prepare to do a grisailles. 

Draw some shapes that have volume on your watercolor paper. You can just trace circles from a jar lid to make it easy.

Choose some colors that are staining and can go from very light to very dark. Neutral tint will also work well. You want a color that doesn't move if you glaze over it.

Shade each shape using a different color. I used neutral tint, burnt umber, Day's gray, Dioxizine violet, sepia, and pthalo green in the sample below.

Here I used cobalt, pyrol red, phthalo blue, and BrushO (just for fun) light brown.

When they are completely dry, choose one color to glaze over each one. (You want to just touch the color on lightly, not pressing or scrubbing with the brush, trying not to move the color underneath. )This is the control of the experiment. If you know you want to paint something blue, paint blue over each one. If you want to paint yellow, put yellow over each one. This is for you to see how a color would react if underpainted with another color.

So, I know that I want to paint a portrait. So I used my general portrait mix (raw sienna, coral, and magenta) over each shape. I'm interested in it making a natural looking skin tone.

You can see that cobalt granulates even when glazed over. I was surprised that I like the BrushO one. But I will probably use burnt umber or sepia for this painting. Although the green looks interesting.

Anyway, experiment and see what you like best, whether doing a portrait or a still life or a scene.