Grisaille comes from the French gris, meaning grey. It refers to artworks made entirely in shades of black and grey, or in a narrow range of neutral tones. You’ll find the technique across manuscripts, panel paintings, and decorative schemes from the Middle Ages onward. Artists used it to imitate carved stone, to separate sculptural forms from full-colour scenes, or to map out the tonal structure of a composition before colour was added. Today, we’ll look at a few examples of this technique in practice and explore what artists can learn from it.