A Good Morning

11.75" x 9.9" acrylic on canvas

For this small painting, I started out with a 'grisaille' under-painting, as I often do. This is where you sketch out the entire composition in gray-scale as a value plan; in essence, the 'grisaille' represents the pattern of light over a subject's shapes, done in white, variations of gray, and in near-black. Another way to think of it is identifying what in your subject is in full light (white), what's in gradations of shadow (variations of grays to define shapes), and what's in full shade, or your darkest dark. After completing this 'grisaille', which takes the greater length of time, it's easy to then quickly add the colour you want, transparently, over all of the gray-scale under-painting. For this painting, I applied colours lightly to create the softer effect I was after--a good morning, full of optimism.