Tell me about your grays

Brenda Ellis · 08-18-2005, 08:57 AM

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.

Richard Budig · 08-18-2005, 03:18 PM

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

Richard Budig · 08-18-2005, 03:29 PM

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.

Tom Edgerton · 08-18-2005, 04:41 PM

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

Brenda Ellis · 08-18-2005, 08:58 PM

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.

Richard Budig · 08-19-2005, 08:31 AM

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'."

Tom Edgerton · 08-19-2005, 02:14 PM

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