Linda Coulter's  National Art Seminars can be hosted by painting groups at locations in the continental USA.

How to Host a National Art Seminar
 

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Grisaille (pronounced griz-eye) is a painting term that means "gray tones".  This monochrome painting executed in gray tone values ranging from dark to light, transparent to opaque, flat to reflective, and sometimes from warm to cool.

Transparent oil color glazes are then applied over the finished grisaille painting to add personality and excitement to the art work. 

PaintWorks Magazine published Linda's feature story entitled, "Colorless Paintings -The Grisaille Secret."   Therein Linda Coulter described her reasons for choosing the grisaille art style and explained to international readers that her art style is based on Renaissance art concepts of the Old Masters of Europe.  

Loved and taught internationally, Linda Coulter's grisaille art style is fun and easy to learn for painters of all skill levels.

The painting shown at left represents an advanced project. 

The projects shown below are examples of beginner projects.

These projects are based from scenes at Colonial Williamsburg and plantations along the James River.

This was the first project to be designed and taught by Linda Coulter internationally.

Shown here is a Coulter Grisaille Seminar that Linda Coulter taught to her students across Japan. 

Linda was the cover artist of a Japanese magazine that  featuring this art seminar. 

Linda took a photograph of a church in Rhode Island to create this scene. See the hydrangeas to the right of the door and the climbing roses in the upper left corner?  The picture at lower right shows what the project looks like after color glazing, but before the final opaque color accents were applied. 

The benefits of a grisaille foundation: 

1.  Grisaille (gray tone value) underpainting divides and conquers the painting process, so it's great for painters of all skill levels.  

2.  In essence, an artist must capture the rhythm of nature and allow light to dance playfully through an art work.  The foundation for this is achieved in the graytone process. 

3.  The artist builds a foundation in gray tones.  This monocrhome underpainting ranges in value from black to white and includes various gray values that will facilitate various kinds of effects when light tries to pass through or bounce off the layers of paint.  

4.  The truly effective grisaille underpainting builds a network of paint layers that actually channel natural sunlight from the surface (ground layer), all the way up through the final layer of colors.  So, when the sunshine pours down on this painting, the structure or network of the grisaille underpainting makes it possible for the light to be reflected back to greet your eyes with rich color infused with shimmering light!  In other words, luminosity. 

This concept was developed many centuries ago when pigments were very scarce.  The Old Masters had only a handful of pigments to accomplish their beautiful results so they had to push each individual pigment to its fullest capacity to be able to achieve the luminosity in their art work that made them famous.  In essence, they cherished the "inner light" that played and danced through their network of colors on canvas, and made that "inner light" an integral part of their paintings. 

Not every art work requires brilliant luminosity to achieve the desired results.  However, even a soft misty atmosphere should be enhanced by colors infused with natural sunlight to capture the essence of life.  

5.  The grisaille underpainting provides a foundation for transparent color overlays.   Transparent colors have no body by themselves.  That is, you can't create textural quality using a transparent paint alone.  Thereby, the illusion of texture is created in the grisaille underpainting, over which color is glazed using transparent oil paint.

6.  The finished grisaille underpainting can stand alone as a finished art work.  That would be called a classic grisaille.

7.  Linda Coulter's multi-layered art works are designed with passageways through which light can freely pass, producing the special effects and illusions that the artist wants to achieve.

In essence, she allows natural sunlight to participate in the finished design and uses only a handful of precious pigments to produce color radiance in her art works. 

Join Linda Coulter in classes at the international painting convention held this year at Wichita, Kansas.  Click here to see the projects.

Visit www.grisaille.com for more information.

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