This month I continued my theme of vessels and flowers, but wanted to experiment with a slower process and a more traditional technique and style of painting.

I decided to try out the Grisaille technique. This is a process where you create a greyscale underpainting first to establish light, shadow and tone before adding colour in thin layers of coloured glazes.

To begin I turned my photograph to greyscale , printed out the image and used a grid to create an accurate drawing.

The next step was to create a grey underpainting where I established the light, shadow and tonal values of my painting. This is a lengthy process which is made much easier by turning the reference photograph black and white.

Finally, I returned to my original colour reference photograph and added colour to my painting using thin layers of acrylic paint mixed with glazing medium. This is quite a fun and quick process because the tonal values have already been created by the underpainting.

I was pleased with the result of the finished painting and enjoyed the process of experimenting with the Grisaille technique.