One of the easiest and most valuable tools for accurately mixing grays is the color wheel. This one is useful to pinpoint pure primary colors and those with slight tonal variations. By identifying these differences, we gain the ability to mix vibrant secondary colors. Failing that, we also obtain the ability to mix "cut" colors. A "cut," "burned," or "dirty" color (among other colloquial terms) is a grayish color.

In some of the previous posts, Eliyahu Mirlis focused on how to use the color wheel to achieve bright shades of color. In this text, this New Jersey-based artist will focus mainly on how to use the color wheel to achieve precise halftones, grays and shadows. He will also talk about why some color mixes are more difficult to achieve than others. The latter is related to certain characteristics of the pigment particles. These characteristics in pigment types are particularly important when mixing grays and other grays.

How to mix grays in a painting

Artists who have been painting for a short time are generally more interested in how to achieve bright colors. However, an experienced painter such as Eliyahu Mirlis knows that grays, midtones, and shadows are extremely important colors. This, among other things, because it is next to these duller tones that bright colors appear to be more luminous. However, this is not the only utility that grays, midtones and shadows have in painting.

When we paint exclusively with bright colors, all the hues in our paints compete with each other. The result of this is a painting without defined points of attention, which is not necessarily a negative thing. However, it is always valuable to make conscious use of the resources that color provides us. A good balance between grays, shadows, midtones and bright colors allows us to generate spatiality, volume and luminosity, In addition to allowing us to work the composition by color. Likewise, the amount of emotions that we can produce in our work is expanded. It also increases the number of messages that we can transmit through it.

An artist with good use of color can make use of different types of tints (shades of color with white), tones (grays and midtones), shades (diverse colors) and shadows (gray midtones without white). Next, abstract painter Eliyahu Mirlis will talk about how to use the color wheel to accurately blend grays, midtones, and shadows.

Mix grays: shadow and midtone colors

When it comes to mixing nuances of primary and secondary colors, we want our colors not to dirty each other. On the contrary, when it comes to mixing midtones and shadows, we want them to do so. The same thing that we take into consideration when mixing shades will be useful to create multiple grays. The only difference would be that this time we will apply it in reverse order.

Shadow colors

Shades, including various shades of black, are our darkest colors. Some shade colors like Burnt umbers are very famous and widely used. In general, the shades of shade that we find piped are reddish, orange or yellowish. Although there are also them, there is less variety of green, purple and blue shades. It is for this and other reasons that it is useful to be able to blend shadows with precision, since we will not always need warm shadows. Also, the mere use of black mixed with color or pure black for our shadows is not always a good option.

Monet used to say that black pigment should not be used in shadows. The truth is that in the shadows of our paintings we can make use of great chromatic richness, so it is generally better to mix different colors and thus achieve a high chromatic vibration. In fact, Monet's favorite mix for producing black was the mix of viridian green and alizarin carmine.