Classic Painting Methods: Caravaggio | Grisaille and Glazing

I'm going to work on this copy of Caravaggio's painting: David and Goliath. I just want to demonstrate these classic methods to help those who have doubts about how to apply transparent colors over a layer of gray. I will not use the same materials that Caravaggio used in his time. I will use modern substitutes. I'm not looking for this to be a replica, just an example of the method. Of course, the result will be different from the original. Many of the qualities of old paintings are a consequence of the materials used. But as an exercise on how to build a painting by superimposing layers of transparent colors I hope this sample is sufficient. We can also see what kind of result we can obtain using modern materials. Having clarified these points, let's get started. Caravaggio used a brown primer. I'll mix Burnt Sienna with some black to make it darker and a little white to gray it out. I am using acrylic paint to prime this canvas. The advantage of acrylic paint is that it will dry quickly. In a couple of hours this canvas will be ready. Oil paint adheres perfectly to an acrylic base. You can be confident that acrylic paint is an optimal material for your primers. This canvas was pre-primed so I'll only apply a couple of coats to get an even color. Some painters like to use a clear coat of color so that the white of the canvas shows through and brightens the base. But Caravaggio used uniform, opaque primers. Now about the drawing. There is a general consensus on how Caravaggio drew his paintings. Most historians say that he used a type of optical projection to help him trace his drawings. He did not have a digital or slide projector. But with a set of lights and mirrors he could have turned his studio into a camera obscura and made projections. It also appears that Caravaggio painted directly over this projection. I will trace first with a pencil. This will be to avoid confusing the painting with the projected image later. This is a step that Caravaggio would not do, but I do it just to make this demonstration clearer. I have a digital projector in my studio. I use it to transfer drawings. But you can use any other method to make the drawing: A grid, the camera lucid for mobile phones or print the image and make a carbon copy. In this case, the format is 50 x 40 cm, I would divide the image and print it on four letter-size sheets. I would rub some charcoal on the back of the sheets of paper and trace each section. Of course you can also draw it freehand, whatever works for you. Now let's start with grisaille. In my palette I have Titanium White, Raw Umber and Ivory Black. I am using oil paints. I start with pure black. I am using a pig hair brush. I am diluting the paint with a little odorless solvent. I am not going to add linseed oil in this first coat. I want the layer to be thin and dry quickly. We just add a little solvent until we feel that the paint is fluid. That it has a pleasant consistency to work with. I am using black to mark the drawing lines. I can use a smaller brush to define some details. Once the drawing is finished I will start the grisaille. The idea behind using a grisaille is to set the lights and shadows first. That is, the volume of the figure. I will explain to you later the benefits of this, But first let me describe what I am doing. With a bit of Raw Umber I define my darker tones. I start with the hair. Then the shadow areas on the neck and nose. All the darkest shades of my image. Once I have the darkest shadows defined, I'm going to paint the brightest highlights. There is no rule about the order of the steps to follow. We could start with highlights or midtones. But the benefit of putting your darkest shadows and your lightest highlights first is that you will set your maximum values. And then we can paint all the shades in between. If you start with the midtones it is more difficult to know how long it will take to reach the maximum light or darkness. I add a bit of Raw Umber to my white and work the intermediate tones. The advantage of making a grisaille is that we can focus on building the shape first. And later we can focus on color and textures. Thus, we separate the complexity of an oil painting into two parts. And another reason this technique was used in ancient times was to save materials. Colors used to be very expensive. They still are. With this method you can build the foundations of the image with inexpensive materials. And apply your expensive colors only in thin layers. I am applying a thin coat of paint. If I use a thick coat, it will take too long to dry. And it could break the layers that I put over it. This thin layer should dry in two days maximum. Once the first coat has dried, I will apply a second coat of gray. This second layer will better define the shape. Again, I am using just a little bit of solvent to thin the paint. For now I am not going to add linseed oil. Using the first layer as a guide, it will be easier to define the shapes and tones. The tones will be more subtle and precise. And we can achieve a better result. You can apply a third gray coat if you wish. It is better to define the shape very well during grisaille, correct any drawing errors and place the shades correctly. Making corrections later will be more time consuming. These layers should only take a couple of days to dry. If the paint is dry to the touch but still fresh underneath, the next coat will remove the fresh paint. Make sure your paint has completely dried. Let's get to the exciting part. How to apply color. Looking at Caravaggio's paintings, I can see that he applied several thin layers of color. We can start by indicating general areas of color. The yellow, orange and red areas. In my palette I have: titanium white, yellow ocher, burnt sienna, red oxide and Raw Umber. I start with a little ocher to indicate the yellow areas. Then a bit of Burnt Sienna for the slightly more orange areas. And a little reddish iron oxide for warmer areas. This is just to take away the monochrome look from the painting. And start coloring it. Now I am diluting my paint with 90% solvent and 10% linseed oil. I add a very small percentage of oil. The idea is to gradually increase the percentage to respect the fat over lean rule. Now we can start adding more details. I mix the color I need on my palette and apply it in a thin layer. The first layer of color is still fresh. But that is not serious, both layers are very thin and do not affect each other. I am alternating between a wet and a dry brush. When we apply paint to the canvas, it can look rough or uneven. With a dry and soft brush we can integrate or blur the paint edges. The advantage of oil painting is that it stays fresh for a while and allows us to manipulate it. The advantage of a palette of earth colors: Ocher, Burnt Sienna, Terra Rosa and Raw Umber, is that their shades are close to each other. They are very easy to integrate. They are not very contrasting. So it's very easy to paint skin tones with just these 4 colors. Some areas may require a reddish accent, so I add a bit of Alizarin Crimson to my palette. And we may need to add a drop of black to make some shades darker. There will be few cases where we need a shade darker than Raw Umber. But when I was painting this exercise I noticed that it needed a darker step. The process now is to continue mixing the shades I need in my palette and applying them in thin layers. The advantage of using thin layers is that the layers seem to blend in with the dry colors below and with the adjacent colors. The colors that we are applying will not contrast too much. And we can better control our tonal steps. That has a lot to do with grisaille. Gray gives us a guide to where the shades go. We will easily notice if a tone is wrong. If we put a light color on a dark base, it will look chalky, or dirty. The color will not look sharp. When we set the tonal values ​​in our first layer, we made the coloring stage easier. Of course, this does not mean that we cannot correct. But when we need to put a dark color over a light one, or a light one over a dark one, it is better to use a thicker layer. So it doesn't look like there's a wrong shade underneath. It only remains to continue detailing. Adding more tones. Accentuating colors. For example, if we notice that a tone is more intense, we can apply a transparent layer of color to accentuate it. I can see that my painting needs more volume on the cheeks. Compared to the original, mine looks flatter. But I note that this could have been more easily resolved during grisaille. If you go back a bit in the video you will see that this volume was not well defined in the grisaille. And that could be more difficult to fix during the coloring step. Of course it can be corrected. But it would have been easier during the grisaille. I hope this video helps you get a better idea of ​​how grisailles are colored. If you have any questions you can address them in the comments section. I can only thank you for having seen this video and see you in the next one.

Channel: César Córdova

Views: 184,417

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Keywords: painting, art, oil painting, how to, painter, real time, maler, Dipingere, Peindre, curso de pintura, clase de pintura, pintura al óleo, acrílico, aprender a pintar, pintura, óleo, clases, curso, gratuito, como, como hacer, tutorial, cesar cordova, arte, manualidades, dibujo, dibujar, malen, Anstreichen, Verven, للصبغ, Mengecat, 作畫, pintar, 塗る, Peinturer, Рисовать, पेंट करने के लिए, Caravaggio, Grisaille, Glazing, old masters, techniques

Id: zJRXt-Oxk-Q

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020