Description
"Grey Green is a soft grey colour similar to the traditional davy???s grey but without the grittiness and weakness that pigment is prone to. Neutral colours are very common in nature and so the artist is constantly using them. It is possible to mix them all from brighter colours but the convenience of having certain standard grey tube colours on hand like this one and Payne???s Grey has made them very popular colours for more than 150 years. Henry Davy was an artist who made a living teaching art and making etchings and watercolours of romantic ruins of stone buildings in the south of England. This architectural interest lead his interest in a pigment made of ground up slate with yellow ochre and black to give it a greenish character to reproduce the colour of stone ruins. The colour itself proved popular amongst landscape artists but few liked the grittiness of the colour. Davy is probably better known these days because of his colour than for his humble artworks. Modern fashions have moved on too and we no longer paint a lot of romantic ruins and yet greenish greys tend to be generally useful in landscape painting.
Grey Green is a modern blend which has none of the disadvantages of the old colour while retaining the useful slightly greenish hue that artists like. It is a blend of white with Phthalo Green and black and is very permanent. It can be used as a grey in landscape and other painting techniques but it can also be thought of as the base for making a wide range of other colours. Mixed with Australian Ghost Gum or with Unbleached Titanium it makes very soft and gentle greys. A very warm grey results from mixing it with Ash Pink, while a cooler more blue grey comes from a mixture with Australian Sky Blue.
Most of the colours it makes tend to be subdued and softened. In a mixture with Dioxazine Purple it makes a lovely soft violet colour and a mixture with Ultramarine Blue makes a delightful greyish blue that is very easy on the eye. Since the colours in the Australian bush are often greyish greens this colour shines for these sorts of colours. Grey Green mixed with Chromium Oxide Green is a great start and it makes soft warm olive greens when mixed with Australian Yellow Green. Henry Davy might have been disappointed at the lack of old ruins to paint in the new world but he would be rather chuffed that Grey Green continues to be a valued colour long after his first experiments with making a colour like this.
"
also purchased
