Today I decided to make two convenience mixtures for myself. I’ve been using a couple of mixed darks to reduce the chroma of other paints. I typically mix up the dark mixture, then create a string of paint with increasing amounts of flake white added. I can use this to neutralize any paint by adding a neutral of the same value. This makes it fast and easy to mix a hue and then cut its chroma. To save time when setting up my palette I wanted to tube the neutral dark mixtures. I used the glass muller I bought a couple of months ago and a slab of marble left over from a home improvement project.
My first mixture is a fast-drying lean neutral dark for underpainting. It is a blend of Williamsburg German earth (a natural Mars black) and Old Holland burnt umber. It’s about 2 parts BU to 1 part GE. To make the mixture neutral (which I tested by mixing with white) I needed to add a small amount of ultramarine blue.
The other mixture is a slower drying fatter neutral dark for upper layers of a painting. It is a blend of Williamsburg ivory black and the same Old Holland burnt umber. The ratio worked out to be about 3 parts IB to 2 parts BU to make a paint that mixes to a neutral with white.
Obviously, I’m not one of those people who think that using black is equivalent to painting suicide. Blacks are incredibly valuable when used with restraint. My most recent painting (the one with cherries) is probably my highest-chroma painting ever, yet almost every mixture in it contains some black.
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