This limitation of the possibilities of composition by decorative considerations was of hardly any importance. The wide gulf between free painting and vase picture was conditioned in the first instance by technique. It was that which gave its special effect to the black-figured style and set its stamp upon it. We saw previously that vase-painting, when it took over the silhouette style from the decorative animal frieze, increased its distance from free painting, under whose spell it had been for a good part of the 7th century, that with the incised technique it took over, _e.g._ the circular drawing of the eye, and with the new colouring entered decorative paths (pp. 38, 44, 49). Free painting drew with the brush on light ground, used black and white very sparingly, more frequently red, blue, green, yellow and brown; placed these colours side by side in simple harmonies, with very little gradation and shading, but also sometimes, _e.g._ to represent fire, used the smooth brush; rendered the men in reddish brown, women, children, animals and objects in light colouring. With this free-coloured effect the black-figured style was neither able nor anxious to compete. Just like the Geometric, it is in its own fashion again an ornamental style, which does not disown its predominantly decorative character. The figure silhouettes serve it as ornaments to fill a given space, which are in a certain equipoise of colour in relation to the rest of the decoration and the black painted parts of the vase; the incision stipulates a sharp delineation of types, the imposed colour gives a parti-coloured effect. The coloured effect of the vases is essentially defined by the clay, which now, in the developed black-figured style, takes on a brilliant warm red upper surface, and by the black glaze, which assumes a metallic lustre. The darker colouring of the clay deprives the lighter parts of their effects by contrast, and compels the painters to replace the contour-drawing of women, linen garments, etc., gradually by laying on white colour, with which at first the contour is simply filled; but afterwards more commonly black underpainting is overlaid. With the transition to white, clear silhouettes are also obtained, which set off against the background more effectively than the old contour figures.