underpainting with grisaille and verdaccio: a monochrome first layer for oil painting

Learn to build a thin monochrome underpainting in grey or raw umber, keep it high in key, and glaze colour over it without going cold or muddy.

7 min read

An underpainting is a single-colour first layer that settles your drawing and your values before any colour goes down. Grisaille is the grey version, and the classic manual you will lean on here uses that word for a grey preparation that colour is later laid over [1]. Verdaccio is the greenish-grey version of the same idea: an olive-toned monochrome, traditionally mixed from black, white and yellow ochre with a little red earth, that Italian painters from the fourteenth century onward used under flesh so that the warm colours laid over it would read as living skin rather than as paint. The sources below describe the method mostly in raw umber and in black-blue-white, so this guide treats both as one process with a different tint. The difference that matters is what you do with the layer afterward, and that is where most beginners go wrong.

What you need

Raw umber, which one manual recommends for a monochrome study because the pure colour is deep enough and extra colours only hamper you [2].
Black, white and a little ultramarine, if you prefer a cool grey grisaille. This is the set of colours Reynolds named for his first and second paintings [3].
Turpentine for the first layer. It dries "dead" and leaves the surface slightly absorbent, so later layers sit better [4].
Linseed oil for the later glazing stage [3].
A primed panel or canvas, and two or three brushes of different sizes.
A reference with clear shadows. For a cast, the manual advises toning a very white one down with a thin raw umber wash so it picks up fewer reflections and reads more simply [5]. Set it in a fairly strong light so the shadows are definite [5].

Step by step

Simplify the subject to a few values before you touch the canvas. Oil paint is a suitable medium for studies in three values [6]. Squint at your reference until it breaks into dark, middle and light.
Decide your tint. Raw umber alone gives a warm, safe monochrome [2]. A black, ultramarine and white grey gives a cooler grisaille [3], but it carries a risk of coldness that is covered under mistakes below [1].
Thin the first layer with turpentine alone rather than oil. Too much oil darkens the colour and makes the surface somewhat soapy after a few paintings [4].
Think only of the main planes at first. Lay in the shadows and half-tone, then translate the local colour of each area into its tone value [2]. A red cheek and a pale forehead become two greys, not two colours.
Look to the edges once the masses are down. Half-closed eyes show you where the outline tends to lose itself in the background. Lose and find the edge to take the hardness out of it and suggest the form turning away [2]. Do not soften the whole outline, or woolliness results and the light and solidity suffer [2].
Keep the key high. The manual wants the underlying greys high enough in key to allow for the warmer tints that go over them [1]. Put your lights lighter than they will finally be, and avoid a deep, heavy shadow note in this layer.
Translate as you paint. Think of yourself as extracting the red and yellow from what you see and painting only what would be left if they were absent [3].
Let the underpainting dry completely before you add colour [3].
Add colour as transparent glazes and semi-opaque scumbles, with oil at first [3]. A glaze is a transparent coat of colour. A scumble is semi-opaque, so the paint beneath still shows through [3]. The manual likens the process to tinting an engraving with watercolour [3].
Bring in fuller colour by degrees rather than all at once [1]. Each glaze treats the layer below as a light ground and makes the result darker [7], so stop adding glazes while the lights still have room.

Choosing between grisaille and verdaccio

The manual says the grisaille preparation varies with the temperament of the painter [1]. It also notes that pure glazing, when the lights are high in nature, may lower them too much, and that mixing a little white into the warm colours helps [1]. In practice, pick the tint by asking what the finished picture is warm or cool in. If the final passage is mostly warm flesh, a raw umber or a greenish verdaccio underpainting stays friendly to it: the green is the complement of the pinks and reds that go over it, so thin flesh colour laid on top reads as cool half-tone where the green shows through and as warm where it is covered. If you want a cool, silvery effect, scumbling a lighter semi-opaque colour over a darker ground tends toward coldness and can give a grey bloom [3].

The manuals in our library do not discuss verdaccio by name, so the recipe above is general workshop practice rather than a cited one. For a verdaccio, mix a little yellow ochre and black into your white, and add a touch of red earth if the green looks too raw. Then proceed exactly as for a grisaille.

Common mistakes

Making the underpainting too dark and too cold. The manual warns that a black and blue underground leads in most hands to a cold blackness throughout, and says this is the main objection to grisaille [1]. The cure it gives is to approach fuller colour by degrees [1].
Letting the shadows run away. An older account of strong dark grounds says they grew darker over time, the middle tints and shadows gained more and more weight, and only the thickly loaded lights stayed bright [7]. Keep the shadows in your monochrome modest.
Using too much oil in the first layer. This darkens the colour and gives a soapy surface [4]. Use turpentine for the first painting [4].
Glazing before the layer is dry. The instruction is to wait until the grisaille is quite dry [3].
Softening every edge. Keep some edges found, or the form goes woolly [2].
Painting in colour too soon. The manual calls monochrome the best initial practice and tells you to restrain the urge to use colour [5].
Forgetting that every glaze darkens [7]. If your lights are already at their limit in the underpainting, you have no room left to glaze.

Study these paintings

The records below describe the surface of finished paintings, so they show you what an underpainting is working toward. They do not show the underpainting itself.

the-music-lesson-by-johannes-vermeer: the record describes brushwork that is nearly invisible, with form built by multiple thin glazes and transparent layers over a pale underpainting, especially in the wall and the flesh. Look at how the wall plane carries its luminosity, and note that the floor shadows read cool and deep. This is the high-key ground with glazing over it that step 6 asks for.

evening-distant-tower-by-camille-corot: the value structure is described as roughly three values: a nearly black foreground, warm mid-tones in trees and water, and a luminous sky. The darks are mixed from burnt umber and ultramarine, and the trees are built with feathery strokes and layered transparent glazes. Squint at it as a three-value study before you plan your own.

linden-dhooghvorst-by-franz-xaver-winterhalter: the record says the surface is smoothly finished, with every edge soft and blended, and that this technique demands multiple thin layers over an underpaint. It also notes the background is a warm ochre-brown rather than neutral black. Study how the face melts into that warm dark.

madonna-and-child-with-two-angels-by-sandro-botticelli: the faces are described as finished with soft edges made by multiple thin glazes over a carefully modeled underpainting, while the drapery keeps crisper edges. The flesh palette is described as a warm underpainting with a thin transparent ochre glaze. Compare the soft face edges with the firmer drapery folds.

portrait-of-pope-pius-v-by-el-greco: the record points to glazing layered over underpainting in the folds of the red cape, with value modeling inside the red doing much of the work. The face has a warm ochre undertone that keeps it from looking dead. Look at how the cape moves from bright red in the light to near-black burgundy in the folds, and consider how a monochrome underpainting would plan that range.

Sources

The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), COLOURING A MONOCHROME
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), PAINTING FROM LIFE
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), COLOURING A MONOCHROME
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), CHAPTER XV PAINTING IN COLOUR DIRECT FROM LIFE-
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), CHAPTER VIII MONOCHROME STUDY
Composition (Arthur Wesley Dow), LANDSCAPE AND PICTURES
Theory of Colours (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)