Underpainting and Glazing to create Form

Grisaille is a term for a painting executed entirely in shades of grey or of another neutral greyish color.  Traditionally is has been done as a classical under-painting technique.  

Our fruit under-painting before glazing will start something like this. 

Here is why!

Notice how realistic the finished pear is!  Here is  are the traditional elements of design used to describe this process.

Light is the first Element of creating Form in classic art.  True gradation and Value differences is the second step.


1. The first step in creating your Grisaille painting is to work in Adobe Photoshop CS6 on a simple fruit photograph to make your high key, middle key and low key value examples.   Start by opening your fruit photograph in Photoshop and changing the mode to gray-scale, then the size to 4 x 3 inches.

2.   Pull down image to adjust and Posterize, don't go any higher in levels than what looks simple to paint!

3.   You can also use filter to cut out to play with the values.  Save your finished sample by pulling file to save for web.  It is already small so you can choose maximum.

4.  Make three versions  of the image by adjusting the value of the photograph using image- adjust levels, or brightness contrast.    Under file, print, print the three images. 

5.  Chose the image to paint that will be the most successful for the colors that you want in your painting.High key should be used for lighter colored glazes and low key could be good for darker colors.  Yellow is light, it is at the top of your color wheel, and red / green is halfway down so mid value would be good, and blues and purples are at the bottom of the range so a low key under-painting would be good for this panting.