Importance of greys

When you look at a scene, are you most attracted to the bright and saturated colors? When I go outside in nature and especially in my garden, I see the colours of the leaves and flowers.  When in the city, the bright colours in advertising, street signs, lights, clothes and cars stand out.

Therefore, it’s only natural that most artists prefer to use bright and highly-saturated tones when painting. The challenge with that tendency is that with too many bright colours, the eye doesn’t know where to rest because everything in the scene is shouting "look at me".

By including neutrals in paintings, they provide variations for the viewer and allow for centre of interest to stand out.  It's like watching a ballet with the prima ballerina being the star and the other dancers supporting her.

Neutrals also create a sense of depth and recede into the distance when used with brighter colours. When painting objects in the distance we should try use more neutrals because there is usually less contrast with objects that are far away, especially when compared to objects that are closer to you.

Neutrals do not always have to be grey, they can be muted greens or blues.

Neutrals also create interest and provide subtle but important variation for your pieces. Nature is a more neutral than we realize. For instance, green grasses may actually be a neutral green, toned down with subtle red and purple tones.  By maintaining a  balance of both neutrals and saturated tones, we can create interesting paintings with a sense of depth.

So how do we mix neutral greys? Ideally you mix a triad: first make a secondary color - such as a violet from red and blue using  equal amounts of color, then add a small amount of the complementary colour - yellow. Here are a few triads that might work for you (all paints are W&N unless otherwise noted)

• raw sienna, ultramarine blue and permanent carmine 
• berlin blue (MaimeriBlu), rose madder genuine and aureolin yellow
• cobalt blue, rose madder genuine and aureolin yellow  
• cobalt blue, indian red and aureolin yellow
• viridian, rose madder genuine and aureolin yellow 

What’s your favorite grey triad?

Grey can also be produced by mixing red with green such as viridian and rose madder genuine or alizarin crimson with thalo green. These greys tend to be on the cool side.  It's the touch of yellow that helps make it neutral.  It's important to know what type of grey you need.

You can also use greys out of the tube. One of the only advantage of doing this is the ability to reproduce it exactly in the future.

Some artists produce the most wonderful muted colours from the "muck" on their palette - as Jen (aka Jaka) would say.

This week's art find is from Jim Black:

Have a great week,
Danielle