How To Paint Grisaille Highlights in Acrylic: Titanium White

/ Uncategorized
/ By Matt Philleo

I’ll show you the techniques for blending highlights in acrylic portrait

Grisaille, a classical painting technique known for its monochromatic style, allows artists to focus on value and form without the distraction of color. In this tutorial, we explore how to paint grisaille highlights in acrylic, particularly with titanium white. This technique, inspired by Caravaggio’s dramatic chiaroscuro, emphasizes light and dark contrasts, bringing your paintings to life with depth and realism.

By using titanium white, mixed with a bit of raw sienna, you’ll learn how to achieve a warm, yet stark effect that highlights key areas of your artwork. Whether you’re new to acrylic painting or looking to refine your skills, this guide will walk you through every step, from glazing techniques to perfecting highlights.

Step 1: Preparing Your Canvas with a Dark Glaze

To begin the process, it’s essential to prepare your canvas with a dark glaze, which serves as the foundation for your highlights. In this video tutorial, the artist uses a glaze made from raw umber and acrylic matte medium. This dark base creates a mid-tone that will allow the titanium white highlights to stand out dramatically.

By layering the dark glaze over your existing painting, you can tone down distracting elements, such as sketch lines or uneven color applications, giving you a cleaner surface to work on.

Tip: Mix acrylic matte medium with raw umber to create a thin, even glaze. Apply it over the entire painting, focusing on areas where you want to enhance the depth.

Step 2: Mixing Titanium White with Raw Sienna

Pure titanium white can appear too stark when applied directly to a dark canvas. To soften this effect and add warmth, mix titanium white with a small amount of raw sienna. This combination creates a creamier, more natural highlight.

The translucency of the paint can be controlled by mixing in more acrylic matte medium. This allows for a range of opacity, helping you create subtle transitions between light and shadow.

Technique: Start with a mix of titanium white and raw sienna on your palette. Adjust the opacity by adding matte medium, which allows you to build up highlights gradually.

Step 3: Applying Highlights to the Face and Hands

When painting highlights in grisaille, the most important areas to focus on are the face and hands. These are often the focal points of portraits, and by carefully applying highlights, you can bring a sense of realism and depth.

Begin by using a small, precise brush to apply the titanium white mixture to the brightest parts of the face, such as the nose, cheeks, and forehead. Dab the paint lightly, allowing some of the dark glaze beneath to show through. This will give a natural gradation of light to dark, creating a smooth transition between the highlights and the mid-tones.

Tip: Work in thin layers, building up the highlights slowly. This method prevents the highlights from appearing too harsh and ensures a seamless blend with the surrounding areas.

Step 4: Enhancing Textures and Details

In addition to broad highlights, it’s important to emphasize finer details such as hair, facial features, and textures like clothing. For instance, when highlighting the beard, use small brushstrokes to imply the texture of the hair. This technique brings a realistic feel to your portrait without overworking the details.

For areas like the lips and teeth, use titanium white sparingly, focusing on the parts that catch the most light. You can also enhance the texture of clothing by gently dabbing the highlights onto folds and creases.

Technique: Use a thinner brush for detail work. For areas like the beard or hair, short, quick strokes can mimic the natural texture, while smooth, long strokes work better for areas like the lips or hands.

Step 5: Final Touches with Titanium White

The final step is to refine the highlights and ensure that all areas of the painting are balanced. Evaluate the contrast between the light and dark areas, adjusting the highlights as necessary. This is where you can add more layers of titanium white to really make the focal points pop.

Before completing the painting, take a step back and assess the overall effect. The goal of grisaille painting is to create a sense of depth and volume through value contrasts. Your highlights should look natural and blend smoothly with the mid-tones and shadows.

Tip: Photograph your painting throughout the process to track your progress. This will help you see how the highlights evolve and ensure that you don’t overdo the light areas.

Painting grisaille highlights in acrylic using titanium white can give your artwork a striking, classical look. By following this tutorial and experimenting with Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro style, you’ll be able to create powerful contrasts between light and dark, giving your portraits depth and drama.

We’re continuing on painting a grisaille with titanium white highlights on top of my portrait of Paul the Apostle praying. My goal is to use a similar (though not identical) approach to what Caravaggio does in his tenebrism chiaroscuro works.

In the last video, I did a raw umber dark glaze over the entire painting to give it a ground or a tone to work out of. In this video. I’ll show you how to add white highlights to the clothing—we’ll do a lot of work on folds and creases—and then the hands. Naturally, the hands are important, because they convey the emotion, the intensity of his prayer. So we want to make sure we give them the proper attention.

Understanding the Basics of Tenebristic Chiaroscuro in Acrylic

In traditional tenebristic painting, artists would also start by applying a dark ground or base coat to the entire canvas. But, this method allows shadows to act as the foundation of the piece. The lighter areas are gradually added to create form and depth, using the contrast between light and dark to highlight key elements of the portrait.

I begin with the Apostle Paul with a rich raw umber glaze, applying it over a pre-sketched drawing in colored pencil. Three layers of glaze are added, each building up the depth and darkening the overall canvas. Ultramarine blue and raw umber were mixed for shadows, while titanium white and raw sienna created the highlights.

Key Materials for Acrylic Chiaroscuro

Raw Umber and Ultramarine Blue: These colors are essential for achieving deep shadows in your portrait.
Titanium White and Raw Sienna: Use this mixture to bring out your highlights in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the mid-tones.
Acrylic Matte Medium: This medium helps thin the paint without losing its opacity. It also aids in creating smoother transitions between light and shadow.

By using acrylic matte medium, you can mimic the look of traditional oil paints while working with the quicker-drying properties of acrylics. This medium helps with blending and glazing, allowing artists to work in layers while keeping the colors vibrant.

Steps to Creating a Chiaroscuro Effect

Start with a Dark Ground: Begin your painting with a base layer of raw umber. This helps establish a neutral ground to work on and immediately sets the tone for the shadows in the piece.
Building Shadows: Use ultramarine blue and raw umber to deepen the darker areas of your painting. In this project, I’ll focus on shading areas like the folds of the Apostle Paul’s clothing and the space behind his praying hands.
Applying Highlights: Mix titanium white with raw sienna for a natural, warm highlight. In this example, I use to accentuate the Apostle’s face and hands, making these features pop against the darker backdrop. Use a small round brush (size 4) for precision when applying highlights to detailed areas like the face and hands.
Nuances in Clothing and Skin: Observe how light interacts with the surface of the skin and clothing. Subtle wrinkles in fabric and slight variations in skin tone add realism. Refine these details by constantly checking your reference photo and replicating the shapes and values as accurately as possible.

Glazing for Vibrance and Depth

Finally, one of the most critical parts of this process is glazing. Whereas, thin layers of color are applied over the top of previous layers, allowing the underpainting to show through and adding luminosity. In this tutorial, I also, use matte medium with his acrylics to create smooth, transparent glazes that allow light to pass through and interact with the darker base layer.

For example, after laying down the highlights, I return on a glaze to deepen the shadows and smooth the transitions between light and dark. This creates the rich, vibrant tones seen in the final portrait.

Tips for Success with Acrylic Chiaroscuro

Study Your Reference Photo: When painting from reference, spend at least 50% of your time looking at the photo. The more you observe, the more accurate your rendering of light and shadow will be.
Use a Light Hand with Highlights: It’s tempting to overdo the highlights, but the key to a successful chiaroscuro painting is restraint. Your highlights should be reserved for the most prominent areas to maintain contrast.
Build in Layers: Don’t rush the process. Acrylic dries quickly, allowing you to build up multiple layers to achieve depth and nuance. Thin glazes add complexity and realism to your portrait.
Don’t Overwork Shadows: Once your dark values are established, resist the urge to lighten them too much. In chiaroscuro, the balance between deep shadows and striking highlights creates the drama and mood you’re looking for.

Then, tenebristic chiaroscuro technique is a timeless method for adding depth, drama, and realism to your portraits. In carefully observing your reference and using layered glazes, you can bring an Old Masters’ look to your modern acrylic paintings. Whether you’re depicting a subject like the Apostle Paul or another figure, this technique offers a powerful way to create compelling and expressive works of art.

Feel free to download my free guide on Fixing Muddy Skin Tones to refine your skills further and elevate your portrait painting techniques!

Watch my tutorial to learn more about painting a grisaille highlights in acrylic.

LEARN MORE

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this video. Please share it with your friends and family. Let me know if you have any further questions. I’ll greatly help you.

If you’d like to learn more, sign up for my free email tips and video class today.

Learn How to Paint Acrylic Portraits With My Free Mini-Video Course!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this tutorial and watch the video. That means a lot to me. I hope you find it very helpful in your portrait painting.

Yours for Better Portraits,

P.S. Did you find this post helpful or encouraging? If so, send it on ahead! Let others know with the share buttons below. I’d love to hear your comments. Thank you so much! Also, do you have a question on acrylic portrait painting you’d like answered? Let me know, and I’d be happy to help!

Previous Post How to Block-in Dark Values on Chiaroscuro Acrylic Next Post How To Add Highlights To Background Trees In Acrylic Painting