Pieter Bruegel, Anthonis van Dyck, Jan van Eyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and many other famous artists of our history. What did all these great Old Masters have in common? Their secret is that they used a gray underpainting known as grisaille or the dead layer when creating their masterpieces! All kinds of underpainting have one thing in common. They are all made up of one hue. Whether it is an imprimatura, underpainting with warm hues of umber or grisaille, they are always created by one hue and are monochromatic in terms of color harmony. Monochrome underpaintings are therefore used to lay out values or to determine the tonality of individual elements and to distribute the lights and shadows in the future composition through one specific hue. This way, color, saturation, and temperature are excluded from the painting creation process in the initial phase. What is the gray underpainting for, and how to create it? In this publication, you will find all the answers and learn everything you need to create this type of underpainting that the Old Masters used for centuries!