Williamsburg Artist Oils Launches Neutral Grays Set
June 14, 2022
The new set allows artists to create full-value grisaille paintings with the addition of black and white. Color can then be applied to the grisaille, either full strength or as desaturated color after mixing them with these grays. Williamsburg Oils each have an assigned value that can either be maintained when that color is mixed with the corresponding value of neutral gray or shifted to a lighter or darker value.
Using a neutral gray palette in artwork can be incredibly helpful for artists to overcome some of the perceptual corrections the brain and eyes might make when working with saturated color – causing one to assign lower values than might be appropriate to light colors, or lighter values to dark colors, resulting in a flat or confusing lighting effect in a painting.
Neutral Grays allow artists to adjust the value and chroma of any color without altering its hue. Neutral Grays in this set range from N2 (darkest) to N8 (lightest). Together they produce balanced value "steps" for mixing with other colors. Colors in the new Williamsburg Neutral Gray set can be blended with all Williamsburg Artist Oil Colors to achieve differences in color values.
Williamsburg Artist Oil Colors are manufactured at Golden Artist Colors, Inc., by the same team that produces Golden Artist Acrylics. Included in the set is one – 37ml tube each of Neutral Gray N2, Neutral Gray N4, Neutral Gray N6 and Neutral Gray N8.
This set begins shipping June 20, 2022, so check your local retail store soon for this new Neutral Gray set from Williamsburg Artist Oils! In the meantime, take a quick look at the creation and use of neutral gray colors within the Williamsburg Artist Oil Colors palette with Greg from our product support team. This video also reviews value within the Munsell color system and its utility in neutralizing colors while preserving their value, as well as the Grisaille practice of underpainting in grayscale (or black and white) then applying color glazes https://www.williamsburgoils.com/videos.
If you have questions about any Williamsburg product, contact help@goldenpaints.com or call 800-959-6543. There are also a number of resources on the Williamsburg website, so visit https://www.williamsburgoils.com/products/colors.
