Grisailles I

I have painted many grisailles, of different types ( landscapes, ornaments, bas-reliefs) and I still do. I like them for their strong decorative potential.
Here is a selection of the bas-relief type. I could have showed them randomly but finally I though it was more interesting to point out how my style of painting has changed from the very first example to the most recent ones.
This one,  the very first I did , years ago, was painted , with acrylics, on canvas glued up on panel .

This other one is the first I included in one of the collections I create for Maison & Objet. It is painted with casein. The style is still a little tight but it is already looser and more decorative than the previous one.

Six month later, after a visit to some florentine villas, I painted this one, and later on added a version with two small side panels for a french wallpaper company.

Then I found a nice XVIIIth century sketch that I turned into a bas-relief grisaille...

...and also worked from an old black and white picture I had bought at a flea market . Here are two versions painted from this picture.

This one was meant to look like a real bas-relief . At this point ornamentation becomes trompe l'oeil.

The last two are quite recent and if you compare the last one with the first of this series you will see how I got from tight to loose... from a nice exercise or "beginner's" panel to a painting where trying to show off is not the pont any more...the point is to try and capture the simple but fascinating magic of painted ornaments.