PRACTICAL SEPIA PAINTING
Artists have used sepia, a dark brown earth colour, probably for thousands of years. Its particular quality is its capacity to make the darkest of darks, almost black, which is a vital requirement when painting in monochrome, where every depth of tone is needed. The greatest artists have made use of it, including Claude Lorrain, Rembrandt, Van Dyke and Turner, with the greatest effect. They understood that in using a single colour everything in the painting was reduced to the depth of its tone. It's a great lesson for all artists because the principle applies in every painting no matter how many colours are used. If you get the tones wrong then everything else falls to pieces. In other words, everything depends on getting the lights and darks right. This is why practising painting in sepia is so important; it
