Understanding how to see and organize values well is the first step on the journey to becoming a proficient painter. Grisaille painting is traditionally an important step in this process, in part due to the minimal amount of chromatic information involved.

In this lesson we will isolate and help to develop a particular set of skills for the student, specifically- value assessment and paint handling. From a more expressive perspective, grisaille painting also contains its own aesthetic language that has been employed by some of the greatest painters in western art history. We will go over just a few of them in the 1st lesson. Learning this technique will help you develop the foundational skills necessary to fully understand how to design a portrait in oil paint. In the 1st lesson of this series I cover how you can block in a portrait painting and keep your painting and palette organized.