Home › Forums › The Learning Center › Color Theory and Mixing › recipes for mixing greys
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June 14, 2014 at 1:54 am #991975
I sometimes want neutral or near-neutral greys, and currently my favorite & easiest mix is Ultramarine Blue + Burnt Umber, lightened as needed with white. I will use Raw Umber instead if I don’t mind a slight greenish cast – which often is useful. Or Burnt Sienna or Indian Red if I want a grey that is very slightly purplish. I recently put to use an old recipe that I ‘discovered’ long ago: lemon yellow + Dioxazine Purple, which makes a grey-brown (taupe) color.
I’d like to hear what others regularly use as their go-to recipe to mix greys or near-greys.
June 14, 2014 at 4:55 am #1206849June 14, 2014 at 9:22 am #1206843I regularly use roughly half and half ivory black and raw umber. Ivory black tends to skew toward blue, and raw umber kills the blue and the mix gives neutral gray. Depending of the brands of paint you use, you may have to tweak a little (more of one, less of the other), but you can produce neutral gray. I generally mix values 3, 5, and 7. I can mix between these for the other two, and tweak both ends (lighter or darker) if necessary. I use my neutrals for everything, but especially for portraiture to attenuate flesh tones.
You can also achieve neutral gray with combinations of ivory black and burnt umber or yellow ocher. Again, the dull red or dull yellow kills the tendency of ivory black to shift toward blue.
June 14, 2014 at 3:21 pm #1206832I sometimes use an interesting mix of colors for skies, that results in a near-neutral. I mix Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Orange. Mixed together, they create a nice gray, that can be biased toward either the Blue or the Orange.
I use lots of White, of course, as well.
For portaiture, I often mix Permanent Alizarin Crimson (PR177), and Transparent Sap Green. This is a nice neutral that can be skewed toward either the Green or the Crimson, and with lots of white, forms the beginning of a basic skin color.
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https://williamfmartin.blogspot.comJune 14, 2014 at 3:30 pm #1206841I believe most complimentary colors will make various grays when mixed- red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple
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June 14, 2014 at 8:23 pm #1206854I haven’t done this, but I’ve read about some oil painters who scrape together the remainders in their palette after they’ve finished a piece and put the mixtures into empty tubes for use as neutral grays…
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June 14, 2014 at 8:39 pm #1206844cmorford . . . they may use it for grays, but I doubt that they are neutral. Lore from centuries gone by talk of old time painters doing this, but these days, there is a line of thought that believes paint residue like this, steeped in thinners, would be underbound and subject to lifting off the canvas.
June 15, 2014 at 1:15 am #1206847For neutral I use mostly self-made Vine Black and Shungite. But I found that mixture of Caput-Mortuum and Chromium oxide green can make interesting opaque gray color. These two paints are “must have” for me.
June 15, 2014 at 2:46 am #1206820For portaiture, I often mix Permanent Alizarin Crimson (PR177), and Transparent Sap Green. This is a nice neutral that can be skewed toward either the Green or the Crimson, and with lots of white, forms the beginning of a basic skin color.
Doh! I have both of these colors in oil and it never occurred for me to try this combo as a basic skin tone color. Will try. Aliz. Crimsom + Grumbacher’s ‘Thalo Yellow Green’ is a somewhat popular combo, and I would think substituting Sap Green would give a similar, though perhaps slightly less chromatic, result.
June 15, 2014 at 4:57 am #1206811ivory black + white + some raw umber
a pure grey of black and white looks like cr@p on a painting, but say if you have an array of color on your palette, and you have progressed on your painting, you will find your various mixes have produced a version of neutral that settles nicely within the painting.
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June 15, 2014 at 4:59 am #1206812I believe most complimentary colors will make various grays when mixed- red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple
compliments make some type of brown. they do not make grey
"it's alright to be judgmental,,,,,,,,if you have taste"...MILT
June 15, 2014 at 5:11 am #1206842compliments make some type of brown. they do not make grey
it depends on the pigments and on the amount of each colour used in the mix.
I either mix complementaries or, much more often:
vandyck brown with ultramaine or delftblue (Schmincke).June 15, 2014 at 6:52 am #1206821The ‘technically correct’ definition of ‘mixing complements’ are two paints/pigments which mix to neutral grey or black. But some artists use color wheels where opposites often mix to some form of brown (or even dull green in the case of some orange + blue combos) …which can be a useful thing.
It’s a bit like the choice of primary triad: the ‘technically correct’ CMY or some form of RYB triad that a lot of artists prefer as their primaries for ease-of-use, opacity, and the different color gamut that it is better suited for.
June 16, 2014 at 8:17 am #1206864I haven’t done this, but I’ve read about some oil painters who scrape together the remainders in their palette after they’ve finished a piece and put the mixtures into empty tubes for use as neutral grays…
Gamblin actually sells one of these each year, they take all their excess paint and mix it all together and package it up.
It’s a bit like the choice of primary triad: the ‘technically correct’ CMY
Yes you’re onto it here. Most people have the wrong idea when mixing compliments. Red IS NOT the compliment of green…regardless of what all those flaky art teachers are preaching in their classrooms on a daily basis.
And if you’re looking to try something right out of the tube, old holland makes a graphite gray, although I haven’t used it in a while and I remember it’s consistency being “different” it might be worth a try.
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June 16, 2014 at 12:47 pm #1206822…if you have an array of color on your palette, and you have progressed on your painting, you will find your various mixes have produced a version of neutral that settles nicely within the painting.
Yup – this is a nice advantage available when using oils. When using acrylics (other than Golden Open or Atelier Interactive), most of those leftover greys and near greys have long dried and are no longer available for re-use :o .
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