Today’s question comes from Carol:
Carol Writes:
“Prismacolor colored pencils have a variety of greys that are various values and various shades of grey (or gray). I understand that one would use a cool gray on a cool object such as metal, and probably a warm gray on a portrait (?), and a slate gray for water perhaps. However, that’s about the limit of my understanding. Please explain the temperatures and also when one would use the French grays.”
Do you have any information that might help Carol? Please leave your response in the comments box below. Thanks!
Yes there are cool objects and warm objects; but the same object can have a cool AND a warm side at the same time. If the afternoon (warm) sun is shining on a, say leaf, the sunlit side would have warm colors and the shady side would have cool colors. With different lighting the shade could have warm colors and the sunny side could be cool colors… You need to look carefully at what you are drawing to see the correct colors to use.
For portraits the same rules apply–so you could be using both the warm and cool grey colors on the one portrait.
Another way to use greys is to layer and modify your other colors. You can change the warmth and coolness of a color as well as change it’s value.
Frankly, I’m no expert with this and could use a good lesson in it along with a lot of other people–so I hope this encourages someone to use this as a topic for a coming workshop article!
I hope this helps a bit. Best wishes.
Art Goddess
Grays are an incredibly flexible color (and yes, they are a color). Not only can you use them to augment certain subjects based on their warmth and coolness, you can also use them to highlight other colors. Using a cool gray in proximity to a warm color causes the warm color to appear even warmer. Using it next to a color that is borderline between warm or cool can lead the viewer’s eye to see it as you want them to see it. The one cautionary hint about grays is don’t try and use them to create shadows. Shadows aren’t gray and attempting to make them so will only bring misery.
Thank you, Art Goddess and Barry! I’m taking notes and it sounds like I need to experiment some. If anyone else can shed some light on these grays (don’t worry, Barry, they aren’t shadows–LOL!), please do so or if you know of an article, please advise those of us wavering between the temperatures.