WIP Grisaille

Denise , the face is looking amazing to me. I can see you might want to continue working on some of the other detail and background, sometimes hard to know when to stop!

It's perfectly painted to my eyes Denise. She's showing kind of interesting mood throughout her face expression, do the eyes... Beautiful artwork!

It's a fine job you've done.  And now I can proffer the advice I didn't want to give before, for fear of distracting you. The work in grisaille painting is done in the early stages; the rest is refinement, and of course colour.  If there is blockiness and overly sharp edges - and I don't say there were, mind - in your original lay in, subsequent glazes will have to fight hard to correct it.  This is where a soft, warm white like real Flake Whites comes into its own, but it's almost impossible to get that now: we'll have to hope that the alternatives being offered really are alternatives, because conventional Titanium White is just too stark.  Buff Titanium might work, though.  Anyway, assuming we can find a white to do the job, blending the shapes, darks and contours before any colour is applied makes the job so much easier: you've had a fight with this one - as you've told us - and I'd have to look back to the start of your thread to see if the reasons for that lay there (not that portraiture is ever easy).   Of course, we can still add strong detail, corrective detail, opaque paint, over a grisaille - the traditional approach though aimed to glaze over work already substantially done.  In the past, painters would use a weakish umber, or more usually Terre Verte, with the white, to create a work that could pass as finished - and then lay their glazes of transparent colour over the top.  This - really isn't easy; I've tried it; but then, alla prima isn't easy either....  You do have the satisfaction of knowing however that barring disaster, a grisaille, brought to a point of completion, is going to work when you glaze over it.   Now, after all that - I'm glad you're not satisfied with it - cruel, cruel, I know: but that's a very good sign that you've learned (as you always do).  And yet - while I've not I think seen the photograph from which you were working, you have created a portrait that lives and breathes on the canvas; and I can tell you one thing - it is a DAMN sight better than a certain royal portrait of one of those assorted princesses, in which a very experienced artist did his very best with (I believe) this very method.   His portrait was skillful, professional -- and the poor woman looked as if she'd been moulded out of plastic.  That is absolutely not the case with yours - you have painted a real human being: and I am not one to flatter, so believe me when I say what I said above: it's a fine piece of work. 

I think I prefer the hat in the previous photo..! But aside from that, it is just a beautiful painting Denise, and I admire your patience and determination with this method of painting.

This is lovely, Denise, a facial expression that is deep in thought. Well done.

May I ask a stupid question? Does this technique mean a method of lean over lean over lean etc?  Rather than fat over lean. My assumption here, is that a glaze is a much diluted paint (with thinner or linseed etc)

A glaze is applying a medium ( which you can buy or make yourself) made up of thinner ( turps usually or odourless, standoil ( thickened linseed), and dammar varnish. In varying proportions. You add this to a colour ( a transparent one) and apply to your grisaille. Let it dry and continue to add various colour glazes. You can do it with acrylics too if you buy an acrylic  medium. They of course dry much quicker.

Using dammar varnish will cause a problem if anyone - in many years to come - seeks to clean the picture.  The solvent used to clean the picture could  also dissolve the paint layer (though, you'd need to use genuine Turps to dissolve dammar) .  This may never matter, but if it does - it will.  Dammar varnish is never a safe additive to any medium, because you never know what someone might choose to clean it with.     A bit of Linseed - or Liquin, if you must: I hate the stuff, but there we are - will do all you need to do; and - you can also apply glazes with transparent oil plus - nothing.  Apply, thin with the brush or, indeed, fingers.   Fat over lean is something of a misleading term; much misunderstood, and I would go into that at length but.... I'm tired!  It just doesn't mean what so many think it means, because they've interpreted it on the basis of simplistic explanation in too many oh-let's-keep-it-simple-they'll-never-know-any-better articles by lazy writers in how-to-do-it-and-please-the-relatives magazine articles, over far too many years and in far too many places.   It makes me very angry - the writers KNOW their advice is nonsense, but they think it's good enough for "amateurs".  Well - it isn't.  Hell, having started I have to go on....  Fat over lean matters on flexible surfaces like canvas; it matters less on rigid surfaces, though truly "rigid" requires definition; canvas stretched over cardboard is not rigid, for instance.  Though even that is marginally better than stretched canvas.  It matters less on truly rigid surfaces, but even so - using oil-heavy paints beneath oil-poor paints is obviously asking for trouble - and it's not hard to see which paints are oil-rich and which oil-poor.   It does not mean applying layers of paint with solvents, and then adding oil-heavy pigments on top,  It's better, if you can, to use no solvents at all; they break up paint, destroy it, even.  Lay the solvents to one side - forever, preferably - use earth colours in your initial layers, only adding oil-rich pigments on top, delaying the point at which you have to use them at all; and you won't go far wrong.   Thicker paint over thin is much better advice than worrying about "fat over lean" - which really doesn't mean anything at all, and is anyway widely misunderstood.  Most of us know this instinctively; and most of us don't paint in layers anyway, that's where this advice comes from.   Yes, if you paint indirectly - you do your basic painting with an oil-rich white (like Titanium) then add oil-rich pigments to it, and then glaze over it, when it (eventually) dries with over-thinned paint - it will crack.  But who doesn't KNOW that?  Of course it will: what else would you expect it to do?  Isn't it obvious that your over-painting will take less time to dry than your underpainting?  Of course it is!   This is why some of us regret the loss of lead white and seek an alternative if we can't get it any more.  I'm trying Lithopone right now, but lead white was the medium which made indirect painting possible - and if alternatives won't permit that, we're just going to have to get used to the fact that glazing on a grisaille base will become virtually impossible.