The Pine Shores Art Association has adopted a traditional painting exercise for its online “Sepia Show.” Sepia is a reddish brown pigment that is often used as a grisaille when oil painting – a monochrome depiction of the subject that makes tonalities or shades of the color paramount. A tonal painting depends on the shadows to make three dimensions appear on a two-dimensional surface.

Renaissance paintings, including those by Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, began as studies done in sepia.