Art Lesson: Oil Painting from a Grisaille layer

For Sophomores and Juniors:

When I talk to other art teachers about introducing oil painting, they always raise concerns about time: How do you squeeze oil painting into 45-minute chunks? The secret: finish the grisaille in acrylic (instead of in oil, as Renaissance masters would have done).

Then, students follow a method similar to that of Raphael and Botticelli, but modified with these 3 objectives in mind:

1. Minimize drying time between sessions
2. Maximize students' time spent with a familiar medium, acrylic, while still exposing them to Botticelli's technique.
3. Allow students' to correct errors with ease 

(To the third point, the underpainting is extremely forgiving, but final oil layer is less so.)

To run this lesson, you'll need:

1. ...To drill students in facial proportion, including masterclasses in painting eyes, nose, mouth, and hair. Otherwise let them trace faces from a projector or draw shoulders, legs, and backs.
2. Acrylics: Raw sienna or Burnt sienna (+ water) for underpainting wash
3. Acrylics: Black, White, and Ultramarine for grisaille
4. Oils: Alizarine, Yellow Ochre, White, Venetian Red, Ultramarine, Burnt Umber. (try Grumbacher academy)
5. Turpentine for cleaning brushes
6. Liquin or Galkyd for glazing

Students paint a raw sienna wash, then they pencil-sketch their face. They paint their grisaille in blue-grey acrylic over several sessions. (Only skin and lips will receive an oil layer, so eyes, hair, background, and clothes should be painted their final colors. See Kate's example below.)

When students are ready for the final oil layer, you the teacher will have the oil mixtures prepped in advance.  Pre-mix a transparent glaze (alizarine, gold ochre, ultramarine) and a half-tone scumble (white, yellow ochre, venetian red, ultramarine). This gives your students a whole class painting wet into wet, without squandering 10+ minutes mixing colors. 

To make the painting below, Kate spent 3 classes perfecting the underpainting in bluegrey acrylic and just one class on the oil layer. 

The above are 16x20in paintings.

Notice 2 coats of glazes and highlights, resulting in cool and warm highlights

The Bad: Above underpaintings were too dark, resulting in intensely black shadows. The Good: highlights applied impasto at the end.

Teacher demos show different color combinations students could try (notice my grisaille was also too dark)

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Recipes and best practices:

Grisaille underpainting: White, ultramarine, and raw umber acrylic for the blue-grey mix.

• When painting Grisaille: Students Exaggerate lightness of highlights—can go to white. (They're painting ONLY the skin in grayscale: no teeth, no eyes, no hair, no background). Let dry.
• Also paint hair, teeth, and eyes alla prima full color, but YOU WON'T APPLY AN OIL GLAZE over these non-skin areas.

Glaze Layer for darks: Liquin medium, turpenoid, gold ochre, alizarine crimson, white, and yellow ochre (all oil paints). 1 tube of each color might accommodate 40 students. Except you'll want extra white oil paint and 2 liquin bottles.

• When painting glaze: Should be translucent. This will be the only layer of color/ oil paint over the dark shadows;

Light Layer: White oil, yellow ochre, venetian red, a pinch of ultramarine.

• Mix these colors in different ratios to get any skin tone.
• While still wet: use a NEW, CLEAN BRUSH to paint thick, opaque paint into the lightest highlights only. Then, blend cautiously into the halftones. In the shadows, you should see the bluegrey glow through the translucent oil layer.

More ideas:

Step-by-step tutorial of the pure Renaissance Master style - This tutorial's method differs from mine because tutorial artist applies several glaze layers; Students in my class apply just one.

Next is a junior painting students who used this method on the skin only (grey grisaille; brown glaze; lavender midtones)

Another junior who used grey-purple grisaille, then grey-bluegreen glaze and midtones:

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Below is Esaí Alfredo's version of indirect oil painting -- he probably uses a red wash, then ivory black shadows, then an cerulean+white scumble on the right highlight: