Tell me about your grays
 

I'd like to hear about the grays you mix and use for tempering flesh colors. I use three basic grays: black and white mixed in a string from dark to light; raw umber and white mixed in a string from dark to light, and a mix of about two thirds raw sienna and one third black lightened with white. It makes a curious greenish gray.

Sometimes, I also use a bit of cobalt or viridian and sometimes a touch of ultramarine blue.

But here's the rub, for me, at least. I often don't have a clear idea of which gray, blue or green to use, especially out there on the lighter end when, for example, I'm trying to alter a very light flesh tone.

I get quite similar results with the raw umber or black and white mixes -- either seems to produce a silvery look in the lighter values.

I find that using colors that are close to the desired color is the easy way.

To mix a gray I use Raw Umber and Flake White. To get it greenish, use a dab of Raw Sienna or Yellow Ocher. To get it colder, use Ivory Black or Ultra Marine. To make it warmer use the Red Ocher from your skin color.

I know that you can mix the same colors with the spectral colors and get some interesting grays - but can you do it again ?

Allan

Opposites attract
 

Blue and orange, yellow and violet, green and red and it's play time. I love to experiment.

Jean

Those pesky grays, again
 

I'd love to read a thousand replies dealing with your grays, or your neutralizing methods, and the paint you use to do the job.

I've run into Sanden's "neutrals," which are basically black, white and yellow ocher in combinations that produce three values (3, 5, and 7).

I've run into the combination of black and raw sienna, lightened with white, and the simpler raw umber, lightened with white, and, finally, plain old black, lightened with white.

And then, there is the graying technique of using complements.

It may seem picky, but how too-brilliant colors are toned down is immensely important, and these grays are all different

Can anyone add to my knowedge on this subject?

Possible help on grays
 

Richard,

I know you posted this a couple of months ago. I am new to the forum but, as far as I can see, no one has responded. Personally I think greys are fascinating. It really does matter how you make them.

I think the key is that a painting must hold together in terms of color. I always start by asking myself what color the light is in that particular painting, because the light is what generates all color. There is direct light, and then there is indirect light that bounces around in the atmosphere, and there is shadow. If you identify the color of the light, then the indirect light will be slightly redder, and the shadow will be a complement of the indirect light.

For example:
Light=pale whitish yellow, atmosphere=deep yellow, shadow=violet.
Light=yellow, atmosphere=orange, shadow=blue.
Light=orange, atmosphere=red, shadow=green.

Of course there are many subtle variations. The point is, you can make grey by mixing the atmosphere color with the shadow color. I have found that intense colors like cadmiums and deep blues, purples and thalo green work better because they can be used full strength to add depth to the shadows (see my post on deep blacks in this section) or lightened to make any shade and temperature of grey. If you make grey this way, you can also mix varying amounts into colors to push things back from the picture plane. The beauty is that you can use a mixture consistently throughout the painting, thus unifying the color, and that it makes total sense in terms of the light-shadow relationship in that painting.

I incorporate this theory into my teaching, and my students feel that it makes sense as well as producing beautiful light and depth in the shadows.

I try to stay away from using formulas because they can't possibly work for every painting unless you work only in your studio, in one light, and you find that certain combinations tend to work. I also do not use black and earth tones such as yellow ochre to make grey because these colors are opaque, and I am interested in transparency. Also, if you mix grey from complementary colors, you can vary the temperature simply by varying the proportion of warm to cool.

Richard and Alexandra,

Alexandra, I think you have posted one of the most succinct descriptions I've seen on the nature of grays and color temperatures.

I will also use a combination of complementary mixed grays ( based on Steven Quiller's comprehensive research), as well as the neutral grays. (Not to be redundant in the Department of the Redundancy Department).

I use a hybrid of neutrals somewhere between Daniel Greene's and Bill Whitaker's palettes:

A warm neutral: raw sienna and black, about 6:1

A cool neutral: Grumbacher's ( brand specific, it's cooler) raw umber

And a neutral neutral: Gamblin's Asphaltum

A little flake white will show the dramatic temperature differences each will yield.

Chris,

Thanks for calling my description "succinct!" I actually spent a long time composing it, trying to think out exactly how to say what I wanted to say, so I'm glad it made some sense.

I admire your work very much and I think you achieve beautiful and lifelike color. I checked in the "palettes" section and read more about your palette. You've made a couple of references to Steven Quiller's color theory and I wonder if you could point me to some reference material on the subject?

Thanks,

Alex

Stephen Quiller's "Color Choices" is a wonderful and logical book on color theory.

He chooses primary and secondary colors based on true complements direct from the tube. For each medium of watercolor, oil and acrylic, he provides exhaustive charts, with manufacturers as the columns and colors (as well as different names manufacturers give equivalent colors) as the rows.

For example, Winsor Newton's Cad Lemon is the true complement of Holbein's Permanent Mauve; Winsor Blue is the true complement of Winsor Newton Cad Scarlet, etc.

You'll also find for example, that among the seven manufacturers he identifies for oil paints, five make a permanent violet: Winsor Newton's Winsor Violet, equivalent to Rembrandt's Permanent Red Violet, and so forth.

You can order Color Choices through Cynthia's bookstore.

In addition you can get a terrific color wheel from Stephen, although one is included in the book.

Chris,

Thanks so much for the info on Steven Quiller's book. You've sold me on it!

Alex

Richard,
I wonder how you are going with your journey into grays?

I am at that point myself. I am trying various grays (or is it neutrals?); trying the opaque umber/black/white combo, the more transparent Chris Saper combos (by the way, Chris, i'm reading your book and it's great, very informative), and the mud combos. But I'm not trying the mud combos on purpose.

I am finding, as Alexandra so succinctly stated, that it depends on the effect I want and the kind of painting I am doing or what colors are in my painting. It is all a bit overwhelming, but at the same time exciting. There are so many options! I worry about getting stuck in the idea that there are right answers and wrong answers. So, I have made myself a neutral chart with colors and I have a gray scale made with black, raw umber and white. I'm finding I really have to Plan Plan Plan before I paint. This is slowing me down quite a bit right now. But eventually I think it will pay off.

Anyway, Richard, I would be interested to know what you have found out for yourself about grays and what has worked best for you.

Anyway, Richard, I would be interested to know what you have found out for yourself about grays and what has worked best for you.


Brenda:

Ahhhh . . . what a subject

Alexandra:

I had not seen your post until now. Thanks so much for your "succinct" comments. They really are on point. I'll take any info I can get about grays. I guess they are so puzzling for me because they are (or can be) combinations of other colors. Red is red, blue is blue, and so on, but gray -- oh my. Thanks again.

Richard--

It's not a case of either/or, right/wrong....

You can gray a color back either by adding gray, or adding its complement.

To keep it simple, I think of it as follows:

If you add gray, it more gradually grays the color back. The value of the gray is a large factor in what happens here.
If you add its complement, it happens more quickly, and in a more complex--often richer--way.

From the above posts you can see that there are quite enough grays out there that you can play with.

Beyond this, I remind myself of what Friedrich Engels (1803-1882) said:

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."

Best--Tom

Thank you, Richard. It is good to know that I'm not the only one who has had to face the "gray" issue! Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Tom:

Thanks so much for you thoughts, too.

I hadn't thought of it like that, but it certainly makes sense.

I may be putting too much emphasis on it, but is seems to me that this "gray" question is vitally important. We would all be painting masterpieces if we didn't have to stop and consider how we were going to "knock back" the stridency of this or that passage. Seems to me, it's the art of toning down that makes it work. Even I can take straight color from a tube and put in on the canvas.

I love that little thought at the end of your message. It makes me feel like I should repay in kind. I used to study with this guy out in Colorado. He was full of humorous sayings that were also true. He used to say, "Remember, five minutes of lookin' is worth an hour's paintin'."

Richard--

Hope I didn't sound dismissive... I was trying to affirm your suspicion that the act of painting teaches itself through experimentation.

I appreciate your struggle, though I have always been a value painter rather than a colorist, and wrestle with the other problem--I've always used a lot of gray and am trying to boost the chroma up a little now. A (slight) word of warning, though--I used John Sanden's grays a lot for a while, and still find them useful when I need a certain value warm gray (they have a lot of green in them, to my eye). But again, they kept me from learning about the richer approach of mixing complements, and in some passages just letting the chroma sing a little more. So I'm trying to wean off. Marvin Mattleson's palette also helped some with this.

But it's a worthy exercise you're conducting. I sat in on a talk by Laura Clark, PSOA's 2004 Grand Prize winner, and something she quoted made me feel better (paraphrasing here): "Great painting isn't always a matter of using brilliant color, but using color brilliantly."

Best--TE

Tom:

No, of course you didn't sound dismissive.

I hope I didn't sound like I took offense. I must confess that in my previous life, I had to make a living, and for some reason, I bought and operated a pawn shop (several, in fact, over the years) for around 30 years. Some of the thing I heard on a daily basis caused me to be a bit "crusty" at times, and while it is not longer necessary to be that way, it still pops out sometimes.

An example or two of eye-popping pawnshop minutiae would include the time a dirty old guy came in and wanted to know if I bought children (really), or wall-eyed guy who kept more than 60 ducks in his trailer home (inside, where he lived), or the girl who wanted me to rent a house in my name so she could run a "business" out of it. (You'll notice that I'm not in jail.)

So, I, too, can be pretty aloof without noticing. But, no, you weren't, and I treasure the little tidbits of info I get from the nice folks in this forum. It's funny, sometimes, how the smallest of comments will open a window and let in a lot of light and understanding.

I use ivory black, titan white and a little bit of yellow ochre.

?? I don't think I understand the problem. Full light on or through flesh is usually warm, and "high chroma" . . .

I don't see raw umber tints as "grey" . . . "neutral" as flesh in shadow areas, yes, but pretty colorful yet. Ivory black and a wee bit of alizarin and white makes a lovely muted violet that's often useful at the hairline.

Greys as "grey", I use "plain ol' grey" white and mars or ivory black, depending on the layer.

I like "optical" greys too, raw siena & ultramarine, and raw umber and ultramarine, and I'll send either mix warmer or cooler as I see fit. Sometimes I use a wee bit of sap green to "cool" one of these grey tones in preference to adding more ultramarine.

As the apocryphal quote goes, (Delacroix or Bouguereau, depending on who's telling the story) "I can use 'mud' for flesh if you let me choose the colors that surround it !"

I also feel that as with most painting problems, color is far less important than correct value.

Hello Richard,

The first consideration in color mixing the temperature of the light source. An understanding of this will often yield the best direction to go in as far as which colors to mix for what.

Any time I get a question about color, especially color mixtures, I always ask if they have done their color charts yet. I can usually tell from the questions whether someone has done their charts. The question would have been answered in the doing of them. Here is a link to detailed instruction on how to do the color charts for anyone interested.

http://claytonjbeckiii.com/Instructional2.html

I've merged this thread with another one Richard started on greys, just to gather all the information together.

A while back in the thread I gave a detailed description of how I decide on how to mix greys, but I want to add specifcally that I agree with Clayton: The first thing to do is determine the color of the direct light. This is very important because all color is generated by the color of the light.

The ambient or indirect light is somewhat redder (towards the red end of the spectrum) than the direct light. The color of the shadow will be the complement of the color of the ambient light. If you work with high chroma colors as i do, you can mix the shadow color with the color of the indirect light to make grey. That grey can be warmed up or cooled down as necessary by adding different amounts of the complementary colors. But even if you use other colors, like earth tones, as long as you are aware of the relationship between direct light, indirect light and shadow, and of the colors of each in a given setting, you should be able to mix convincing greys.

I don't recommend always relying on the same color mixtures to create halftones and shadow areas, because the colors of the light (and half tones and shadows) change from one setting to another!

Clayton,

I whole heartedly agree. Color charts are invaluable. I first learned about them from reading Richard Schmid's book Alla Prima. I then spent the next two days making my own color charts. I keep them readily available next to my easel as can be seen in the studio shots posted here:

http://forum.portraitartist.com/showthread.php?t=8854

I also did some charts to study other color mixtures especially browns and grays. They are a great time saver and they are indeed attractive to look at.