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mixing a neutral - red and green?
A follow up from the no black/white discussion...I want to mix quite a large amount of neutral, obviously with some warm/cool variety. The common choice is ultramarine/burnt umber. I'm wondering if and when you might use other complementary combinations to get a strong neutral. I was thinking of red/green. There are of course lots of reds and greens, but together you will certainly get a neutral. Any pitfalls? Has anyone tried, for example, viridian plus alizarin? Or say sap green plus cadmium red? I've sometimes bunged some straight black into a mixed neutral to deepen it. So, you go red-green-black, and then just various red-green combinations? I have a particular scene I want to paint which is a forest in the gloaming. It's quite dark, but what I see are reds and greens. Curious to know what others are doing re neutral.
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Here you go.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2jvlZBcbU&feature=share
Pigment: Chlorinated and bromated phthalocyanine, quinacridone red (PG36, PV19)
My blacks have a combination of all or some of: Raw Umber, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine or Prussian Blue, sometimes adding Olive Green or Payne's Grey to the mix.
@toujours Fascinating. I'm taking notes. Seriously, I must try some of those combinations and was considering doing so only this morning. I mean I don't what else to do with Prussian blue and olive and raw umber--I have these colours but never use them.
Radical Fundemunsellist.
Williamsburg Oils makes tubed Neutral Grays 2, 4, 6 and 8 is the darkest.
Gamblin's Portland Gray oils are 4, 6 and 8 is the lightest.
(Williamsburg and Gamblin reverse their respective value-numbers. Go figure!)
I'm a strong believer in neutrals and grays....both tubed and palette-mixed.
Claim 2: You can always mix any neutral or gray as long as it is strictly within the color mixing gamut spanned by all your pigments whether or not they are colorful, exclude grays, or include grays.
Which of the above claims is true?
I was wondering if I wanted to mix a green which was the perfect compliment of the red in Geneva's standard palette (ie. to make a pure grey when combined), would it be a green on the cool side?
I know this depends a lot on the kind of red, certainly if both the red and green were cool that would lead to a cool neutral instead of a real gray (in the same way your warm red and warm green lead to a warm neutral rather than gray).
But if I wanted to make the colors (I guess green and purple) which obey the simple guideline's of the color theory of Mark's videos I'm wondering what "kind" of green and what "kind" of purple, just work?
Gray suggests a lack of color. Just black and white. The natural world around us is neutral not gray. Neutral as in chromatic grays. Color value. Several paint companies sell sets of chromatic grays.
Here is violet (R&B) mixed with split compliment YellowGreen some pretty nice "grays"
Here is Orange and blue compliment mix. OOO some excellent "grays"
A grey on the other hand simply has no colour, as pointed out by KingstoneFineArt. It can only be made by mixing black and white. Sure, many neutrals will appear to be grey, but again they will be cool or warm, so not true grey. Some artists' paintings have been described as "black" when in fact they never used black, e.g. Francisco Goya and Ad Reinhardt.
Of course, who am I to say? One artist's "neutral" is another's "black". The difference really becomes semantic.
My interest was in knowing what you were all doing in terms of a go-to neutral mix. For Mark Carder, it is ultramarine blue plus burnt umber. I'm interested in the possibilities of red/green combinations. I know one artist who said you should not mix alizarin with viridian, which I thought was odd. Among the suggestions above, I can imagine quinacridone crimson plus ultramarine blue or pthtalo green working well.
Grey is another topic altogether. But I found having a string of grey on the side of the palette very useful for--to use the verb--neutralising colours
I totally agree.
One thing perhaps to note... greying down a red using a grey you made mixing green and red... is in part adding more red... and hence using up more green than necessary - greying down red directly with the green which does the trick (made from yellow and blue) or just directly with blue and yellow in the right proportions... gets you there more directly and uses less paint in the end.
Another thing to remember about so called "pure greys"... unless the piece is in a gallery, viewing conditions will almost always be slightly warm or cool (natural lighting changes during the day, wall color and floors color can have a large effect, light bulbs still are used to light up rooms at night), and hence the warm or cool neutrals might accidentally appear as pure gray, or very warm or very cool from time to time, and the same will happen to the so called pure grays. They will almost never appear perfectly gray, but IMHO it does not matter much.
Like you say, neutral appears to be without color. IMHO appearances are everything.
How you get there with your paint will depend upon what is important to you, use of time, conserving money/paint, pleasure of the process, convenience or ease of the process, etc.
In the case of the red and green compliment you aren't graying but neutralizing to a grayish brown. Red mixed to a split compliment blue green or yellow green return different similar families of 'grays'.
I recommend 'John Sloan on Drawing and Painting' from Dover Books. Chapter seven in particular for his take on color and mixing. The language is early 20th Century. He was one of the most influential painters and teachers of the 20th century. Pay particular attention to his color mixing techniques and his shortcuts to neutrals using earth colors. Which by the co-incidence of his influences is how I used color in my watercolor paintings for 20 years.
You may also find the book under the title 'The Gist of Art'.
If one uses a palette with no “gray” out of the tube, is it impossible to mix a gray? or to gray out a color?
Look at the grays made in these color tables. The grays in the orange/blue (to the blue side are cloud grays. The colors of nature around us made are made from the basic spectrum with a few exceptions.
Grays are warm, cool or neutral. There are earth blacks that are in the middle.
I use earthy color to help with the neutralizing. Yellow ochre the real stuff. Transpaent red oxide for it's transparency. Burnt Sienna for it close proximity to neutral red. I even use a touch of black sometimes but not often.
http://www.huevaluechroma.com/063.php
One of the advantages of not using a limited palette?
In the article posted above by @Richard_P, it says that mixing with grey reduces chroma without changing the value. That's interesting. It makes sense but I'd never thought of it like that. Presumably, the author means a grey of the same value as the original colour that one wants to desaturate.
Up until now I've always just used coloured greys made from white and the chromatic blacks I mix. I'm going to experiment by mixing seven values of grey using Ivory, Carbon or Mars black and titanium white and use these greys to get the values, saturation/chroma and hue I want. If it works it might save me some time, effort and paint.
Let me know how that goes with those greys.
I may adopt it
I suspect the blacks will suck the life out of the values.
Denis
In my experience, greys made with different blacks and white all work similarly. I always want opacity for paint coverage and to reduce value change so I prefer Mars Black if possible as it's very opaque.
This sums if up better than I can and matches my experience:
http://www.huevaluechroma.com/063.php
It's funny how I had this fixed idea that using black would suck the colour our of a landscape painting. It's what I had read and it sort of made sense. But sucking the colour out, as in desaturating/neutralizing a colour, is precisely what I want in certain circumstances and what I get when I neutralize using complementary colours. But if this can be achieved as efficiently and more economically with greys made from black and white, without altering hue and value too much, then it would be just dumb stubbornness not to try it. I think it could work as long as we are not relying solely on tube blacks to darken values - in shadows for example. If we wanted a dark red shadow we would not just mix Cadmium red with black. You would use a pure dark red pigment such as Quinacridone crimson. That way you get the darkness but preserve the redness. My thinking is that greys made with black would only be used where you want to desaturate and not merely to darken a colour. This would be instead of using an expensive complementary, say Cadmium red, to desaturate a powerful green.
Anyway, I'll post an update on how the experiments go.
I have a tube of Carbon black. Unopened. I've never used black. I'll experiment with Carbon as well as Ivory and Mars to see how they work as neutralizers. The blacks might also be useful for making greens, and if I find they don't do the job of desaturating colours as well as hoped, that's what I'll use them for.
I do not use any lamp, vine, or bone black as I don't want to have to learn how to use them without interfering with the paint film integrity or the very slow drying time. I have some ivory black just in case I ever need a darker black than PBk11 mars, but so far - 40 years - it hasn't come up. I use PBk11 in all paintings. (BTW, some very highly rated oil paint companies use or used to use junk pigments to make specialty colors. I always email to verify pigments if I think it is questionable.)
I stay away from natural umbers and siennas as I don't want sinking-in from the high manganese content. I have no desire to learn how to correct sinking-in by adding resin or varnishing. I prefer to avoid the problem.
I suspect that there is no clear advantage to mixing a black or gray from complementary colors, or from just using black or gray. It is just a process of what each painter prefers.
The idea that there may be savings is an elusion. Be honest, all we do is spend money on paint
"All this discussion of using grays seems counter to the color theory of Mark Carder. I find it baffling myself."
Well, we are not obliged to follow Mark in every detail of his method. As he says, once you understand and can use his method, take what is useful to you and go your own way. If we can make use of neutral greys made with black and white, the art police won't find out and come to arrest us for doing so. And, if it works as I hope, it can clearly be more economical than using expensive pigments to neutralize each other.