whats your favourite grey mix?

[kate252]

grey...meaning a loose term for some kind of coldish greyish color that isnt made up of paines grey and white, or black and white.

mine is burnt sienna and cobalt blue or pthalo blue.

id like to know if you have a newly discovered color or a nice cold color that isnt made up of blacks and whites.

many thanks kate

oh, just to show you what this fbulously cool color looks like in its this painting (too lazy to swatch it for you) to the right of the jug in the shadow
http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=959979
scroll down until yu see the second picture which was taken in a better light.

[kate252]

i think what happens is the burnt sienna has some kind of reddish pigment and its the red that turns the blue into a kind of grey.


so sorry to be terribly geeky and boring. all this stuff is a fascination for me and im still revelling in discovering it and would like to discover more.

[Yorky]

I use several greys, for a warm grey I use ultramarine and light red. For a dull grey I use ultramarine and burnt umber. Of course proportions vary depending on what you are aiming for.

Doug

[friesin]

for a cold grey I love phthalo green and a cold red /violet.

[watercolourfanatic]

Take your pick there are millions (well not exactly ) of combinations.

Peter

[painterbear]

I try to mix grays using the colors in the rest of the painting.

Check out the threads on Grays in The Watercolor Handbook:

*Blacks, Grays, and Other Darks*

I Learnt to Make Greys by Rebecca (EchoK)

Neutral Tint Discussion

Recipes for Mixing Grays

Sylvia

[pumkin54]

A nice blue gray I've been using lately is Burnt Sienna and Cerulean Blue. A bit more BS and you get a nice brown. I find Indian Red also makes a few pretty grays: IR+Cerulean, IR+ Prussian, IR+Phthalo, IR+Paynes. Paynes+ Alizarin also gives a nice gray.

I found the most neutral of these to be the Phthalo and Prussian mixes.

[virgil carter]

Sylvia has a good point: for grays to be harmonius with a painting they need to use other hues from the painting.

Grays can be mixed from any complementary pairing. Orange and blue make tend towards a warm gray. Red and green make a cool gray. Yellow and violet are the odd-birds; they make a sort of dull khaki or tan. Best to keep temperatures the same for each color, as Friesin suggests, ie, for red and green, make both hues either warm or cool, but not warm and cool, since that will neutralize the mix.

Grays will lean towards one or the other of the two colors with just a bit of extra paint from one.

Sling it!
Virgil

[painterbear]

My instructor, Nita Leland who calls herself a colorist, tells us not to use Payne's Gray because it tends to dull the other colors in a painting.

She does have people use it for value studies when they first start with the class though, if you have it. (I didn't replace the tube I bought years ago after it ran out.)

Sylvia

[CharM]

Kate, you've asked a great question that has a multitude of answers. My favourite "go to" grey is simply ultramarine blue + burnt sienna. The colour possibilities with just these two pigments is endless.

However, you must also try mixing any combination of primary triads... One red, yellow and blue will also mix up some very exciting grey combinations. And remember, that they will also mix up gorgeous blacks when you reduce the water to pigment ratio.

We talked about some of this in my Mouse Colours Thread almost a year ago...

Payne's Grey is a convenience mixture that's really quite dull and varied in colour across manufacturers. I also use it in value study exercises with my Students, but I do not keep the colour on my palette for painting.

[Marcio C]

My favorite gray is a gray that works in a painting, one that is not really gray but works as a gray in comparison with the other colors in the painting. Some of the combinations I use often are cerulean blue with burnt sienna, or light red, or cadmium scarlet; cobalt blue with cadmium orange, ultramarine blue with burnt sienna, prussian blue with venetian red, etc.

[querin]

My favourite is Perm alizarin crimson and Thalo green blue shade for the darkest as they are both staining the other is umb and burnt sienna not as staining.
querin

[Seaspray]

Oh my, this thread has some interesting combinations that I definately intend to try...

As for me, I love all of the warm and cool variations of greys that can be mixed using raw sienna, permanent rose and manganese...just beautiful.
Carol

[hblenkle]

In any medium I use burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. In watercolors I have started using ultramarine blue and burnt umber also. On my wilder days I even have had great luck with sepia, a neutral dark grey.

[ona]

as Sylvia noted there are some great threads in the handbook on greys. This was was by my daughter when I was teaching her to make her own greys

Never have a set grey recipe.... always use the colours in your painting to make your greys (unless you really want a certain area to stand out or to create tension in your painting. Using the same colours will result in a much more unified painting. Play with creating cool and warm greys too and explore the full range of grey values that you can achieve.

Ona