Day 1: 3-hour monochrome/grisaille study

This is the first painting at Studio Escalier's Alla Prima Portrait workshop:

It is the closest to "true grisaille" that I have done - at least in a long time. ("True grisaille," I guess, would be only black & white paint; this is Williamsburg raw umber + titanium white. The raw umber that I normally use - Old Holland raw umber - is much closer to a yellow ochre - much more golden - than this raw umber. I used this colour 100% due to the fact that I found a partially used tube in the studio and thought I could get a wider range of values out of it than the Old Holland raw umber. Turns out, Tim used Williamsburg raw umber for his demo, so it was the same stuff, but really, you could use any raw umber, or black, or theoretically any other colour. Although, then it would be "monochrome" and arguably not "true grisaille." Which of course means absolutely nothing.)

"Alla prima" means "all in one go": you've got your 3 hours and that's it! There's no going back. So, yes, it's hard. We talked about it: it's scary, it's difficult. We are under pressure. We're not sure we can do it. We're walking a tightrope. As Tim mentioned, painting alla prima sums up everything that you have learned: you have no chance to go back and fix anything. The goal, as Jacques-Louis David said, is to "paint true and just the first go-round." (Let's call that a paraphrase.)

At the end of the 3 hours, I pretty much felt like I'm never going to get this. I have SUCH a hard time rounding form (i.e., painting forms with a feeling of depth, instead of flatness). This is the hardest part of painting, and pretty much what I come to Studio Escalier to learn, cuz nowhere else I've been has talked about the same things.

Anyway, enough blogging: I am off to do another monochrome study. I suppose I'll do a self portrait, since I don't have another model, don't want to paint from a photo, and don't have any still life objects that I want to paint at the moment.

Here I go!

(Oh, by the way, the model's name is Olivia, and the class today was taught by Krista Schoening.)

So...I did a second, "true" grisaille painting today, after class:


It's entitled Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Soviet Sympathizer. It took about 2 hours, and I fell asleep partway through.

The main techncial differences between this one and the previous one are:

• It is true grisaille: only black and white paint.



• It's a lot harder to look askance at yourself while you're painting yourself than it is to look at a model with all of your eyes.



• It's a lot smaller (roughly half the size), and as I mentioned, I only spent about 2 hours of painting time on it.



• I used Cremnitz (lead) white, not titanium white, so it's entirely non-edible.