Tell me about your grays

[Richard Budig]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Richard Budig]

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.

[Bianca Berends]

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

[Richard Bingham]

Originally Posted by Richard Budig

. . . 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 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.

[Clayton J. Beck III]

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