PAINTING A GRISAILLE
A grisaille is generally a term that means "gray." You are painting a gray...or brown or other color...underpainting, concentrating on the values first. This is most often associated with oil paintings. The gray underpainting is done first; when dry, a glaze of color is added.
You can still do this process with watercolor, but you have to be careful about a few things. Watercolors tend to "move" when you glaze a color over them. So for the base colors, you have to choose a very
STAINING color. Notorious stainers are: Aureolin Yellow, Quin gold, (any quinacridones), Alizarin Crimson, Pthalo Blue and Pthalo Green, Indigo, and my new discovery Permanent Brown.
I enjoy doing pictures this way because I'm not worrying about what color to add. I'm just focused on getting the values right.
The first thing I did was get a reference from Reference Photos for Artists on Facebook.
I uploaded it into my Notanizer and changed it to 3 values so I could see the changes more clearly.
3 value version of reference
Reference photo: by Andrea Ludman 9/30/23
I started out with a sketch on cold press paper
I began "sculpting" the shading using Permanent Brown. First in light layers,
then increasing the values in layers.
When I was happy with the values, I dried it completely. This is essential if you don't want the layers to move. Then I began glazing other colors over the pots.I used quin gold and transparent pyrrol orange for the large pot; turquoise for the far pot; an alizarin crimson for the red pot. You may have to paint more than one glaze of color to get the effect you want.
Remember, you are painting over the entire pot, shading and all.
In class we tried different colors for the base layers to see what different effects it has.
TRANSPARENT STAINING COLORS
STAINING colors get into the fibers of your paper and grab on. It's very hard to lift or loosen them, like getting a wine stain on a white tablecloth.
These are applied in layers, though. The reason for this is: As you apply a layer you are giving the paint time to really stain the paper. A thick layer of any paint will reconstitute, just as it does in your palette.
If you do not use a STAINING color for the base, it can move and muddy any color you put on top.
Below is a YouTube about different ways to shade in watercolor. She uses wet into wet, but it's good to see how many ways you can accomplish the same thing.
youtube by Erika Lancaster on 4 ways to 'shade"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfkL6BmegQY
I've been looking for a YouTube about how to shade basic shapes. This is a drawing tutorial (about 9 min) but worth looking at if you are having trouble knowing where to shade a form. You can practice using your watercolors to create these simple gradations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMr6eimcolc
We also prepped paper for the masa paper project. There are quite a few demos of masa paper on my blog, but I think this one has good directions on it.
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8812132386157895665/3528868140791947027
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