Update On Underpainting

Barbara Dahlstedt uses a grisaille technique to create unity and color harmony in her drawings

Borrowing from the oil painters of the Renaissance period, I apply the technique called grisaille, to the application of colored pencil. Grisaille is an underpainting technique in which neutral colors are used to establish the form of a subject. Usually, the underpainting is created using gray or brown tones, but I have discovered that using the richer tones of indigo blue, black cherry, black raspberry or black grape give the skin tones of her portraits a livelier appearance.

I use Prismacolor colored pencils because of their wide range of colors and creamy consistency. The grisaille technique works well for colored pencil because layering light colors on top of darker colors help them blend more easily. By layering the darkest values first, subsequent colors blend the skin tones as the portrait develops. Colors are layered in the same way a painter mixes colors to achieve the same results through semitransparent glazes. In this way, colored pencil drawing is very similar to oil painting. Grisaille establishes the foundation of values for the entire composition. Also, having the same color under all of the dark colors creates unity and color harmony.