"ART is a word which summarizes THE QUALITY OF COMMUNICATION. "
L. Ron Hubbard

Thursday, August 04, 2011

An alternate grey

I follow the blog of Qiang Huang, who paints little jewel-like paintings. In a recent post, he remarked: "I have found that "transparent brown oxide" (Winsor and Newton) and ultramarine blue makes a wonderful gray." Both are transparent colors. This would be an interesting combination to try. Here is the post where he shows the use of this grey.

On a subsequent day, he tried a different combination of colors to make the grey warmer. Here's his comment:

"I felt the gray I used yesterday is a little too cool. So today I tried a new combination: transparent oxide yellow + ultramarine blue. I like this one better. It made the background warmer." You can see his painting on his blog.

I find the use of complementary colors (or near complements) rather than "tube" black for mixing greys fascinating. There's a painter, William Wray, who uses greys and neutrals to maximum effect. I love his cityscapes.