Indirect Painting: The Flemish Technique or Classical Approach

Indirect Painting has a long and complicated history. It is often referred to as the Flemish Technique as it was first widely used during the early 15th Century by Northern Renaissance artists. It is also thought to have been first invented by the Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck.

Jan Van Eyck, "St. Barbara," 1437                                                   Jan Van Eyck, "The Arnolfini Portrait," 1434

For centuries the indirect painting style was the only way to use oil paints. It wasn't until the late 1800 and early 1900s, as Impressionism's direct style started to become more and more popularized, that indirect painting went out of vogue. Although initially its techniques were still taught in artistic academies, it was during the 1950s that, at least in general, it was removed from almost all academic platforms both in the United States and abroad.

Indirect Painting is different from direct painting as it is painted in stages or layers, allowing each stage to dry before continuing.

Each artist or academy had slightly different approaches to the style, but the basic stages to Indirect Painting are:

1. Imprimatura or Ground 
2. Underdrawing 
3. Underpainting / Dead Color  
• Brunaille 
• Verdaccio 
• Grisaille 
4. Overpainting 
5. Semi-Transparent Glazes

Over the coming weeks I will be writing a separate post about each of these stages as well as a small history of indirect painting. In this small history I will show that indirect painting was not the creation of an individual man, but rather the culmination of decades of manuscript illumination.  

To read more about other painting techniques, check out my main Tips and Techniques page.