Coulter Grisaille™

Grisaille (pronounced griz-eye) is a painting term that means "gray tones".  This monochrome painting executed in gray tone values ranging from dark to light, transparent to opaque, flat to reflective, and sometimes from warm to cool.

Transparent oil color glazes are then applied over the finished grisaille painting to add personality and excitement to the art work. 

PaintWorks Magazine published Linda's feature story entitled, "Colorless Paintings -The Grisaille Secret."   When the story appeared in the May issue of  2002, it was very well received  throughout the marketplace, and that issue of PaintWorks has completely sold out.  Therein she described her reasons for choosing the grisaille art style to travel teach nationally, and how her art style is based upon Renaissance art concepts of the Old Masters. 

There are many benefits of a grisaille foundation: 

1.  Grisaille (gray tone value) underpainting divides and conquers the painting process, so it's great for painters of all skill levels.  

2.  In essence, an artist must capture the rhythm of nature and allow light to dance playfully through an art work.  The foundation for this is achieved in the graytone process. 

3.  The artist builds a foundation in gray tones.  This monocrhome underpainting ranges in value from black to white and includes various gray values that will facilitate various kinds of effects when light tries to pass through or bounce off the layers of paint.  

4.  The truly effective grisaille underpainting builds a network of paint layers that actually channel natural sunlight from the surface (ground layer), all the way up through the final layer of colors.  So, when the sunshine pours down on this painting, the structure or network of the grisaille underpainting makes it possible for the light to be reflected back to greet your eyes with rich color infused with shimmering light!  In other words, luminosity. 

This concept was developed many centuries ago when pigments were very scarce.  The Old Masters had only a handful of pigments to accomplish their beautiful results so they had to push each individual pigment to its fullest capacity to be able to achieve the luminosity in their art work that made them famous.  In essence, they cherished the "inner light" that played and danced through their network of colors on canvas, and made that "inner light" an integral part of their paintings. 

Not every art work requires brilliant luminosity to achieve the desired results.  However, even a soft misty atmosphere should be enhanced by colors infused with natural sunlight to capture the essence of life.  

5.  The grisaille underpainting provides a foundation for transparent color overlays.   Transparent colors have no body by themselves.  That is, you can't create textural quality using a transparent paint alone.  Thereby, the illusion of texture is created in the grisaille underpainting, over which color is glazed using transparent oil paint.