Painted from life a few years ago, this self portrait was completed in oil on a 5 x 7 1/4” linen panel. I wanted to focus solely on the light/dark pattern and chose to paint in an open grisaille (griz-EYE). Grisaille originates from the French word gris, or gray. An open grisaille is a painting method that uses semi-transparent gray or neutral tones to establish initial shapes of light and dark (Painting in a closed grisaille carries forward with the addition of white paint to achieve an opaque, full tonal value range using monochromatic tones). Here, using a single paint value, I sought to capture accurate shapes of the light/dark pattern to achieve proper drawing proportion and likeness.