What is a glaze
Glazing is an incredibly useful painting technique. If you are a painter and not familiar with glazes, you are in for a real treat. You can use it to create a variety of painting effects, fix issues, illuminate color and add the illusion of depth in an artwork. Glazing has been used throughout history by many artists including our beloved painting masters, and is still used today for contemporary styles ranging from realism to abstraction. Glazing can be used with most painting mediums including oil, acrylic and watercolor. It is my number one favorite tool.
So what IS a glaze? Simply, a glaze is a transparent color. It can also be an application of a transparent color on a painting already started. In this article I offer a variety of ways to use and create glazes for painting.
When and how to use glazes
A glaze is often applied to a painting while it is still in process, to shift or change whatever colors are already there. It can be applied very subtly to just slightly shift an underlying color, or more strongly to dramatically change underlying colors. In general though, it is usually used OVER a previously applied and dry, layer of one or more colors.
The famous Old Master’s often used a glazing technique called a grisaille meaning grays. First an underpainting of grays or neutrals is applied that indicates where the darks and lights will be. This “gray” underpainting allows the artist to concentrate on patterns of dark and light and general composition concepts, without thinking of color just yet.
When this underpainting is dry, the artist then applies glazes of color over the grays. The color can be applied bright or light, letting the gray underneath shift the hue to be a bit more muted. In this way the gray underpainting turns into a colored painting containing a variety of values or tones.
There are many ways to create underpaintings, and the use of grisaille is a great way to add the look of an Old Master’s realism. As an abstract artist, I like to apply bright opaque areas of color as my underpainting and then use glazes over those to shift tone and hue. This contemporary use of glazing has many advantages. Glazing can create shadows under forms for the illusion of 3D. It can also allow for shifting lights and darks, which can change a flat colored form into the feeling of volume or 3D shape.
Why glaze
Painters often use whatever technique easily gets the desired result. If you want to completely cover over an area or drastically change a color, you would paint over it using an opaque paint application. If, however, you don’t need to substantially change something on your painting, but instead want to add some small shifts or nuance of color, then a glaze is your answer. For example, let’s say you are painting a realistic portrait for a client’s commission. After many hours of hard work the portrait looks good enough to show to your client for approval. Your client however, thinks the flesh tones are too yellow and wants you to fix it. What do you do? Argue with the client? Not a good idea. Return to your studio and repaint the entire face again? Wow that’s time consuming, so also not a good idea.
An easy solution is to apply a glaze over the flesh tones that diminishes the overall yellow cast. Make a glaze mixture using the opposite color of yellow — violet — along with a large amount of a clear medium. Apply this mixture thinly to create a transparent overlayer for an easy fix. See example below.
