Tell me about your grays

[Tom Edgerton]

Richard--

Hope I didn't sound dismissive... I was trying to affirm your suspicion that the act of painting teaches itself through experimentation.

I appreciate your struggle, though I have always been a value painter rather than a colorist, and wrestle with the other problem--I've always used a lot of gray and am trying to boost the chroma up a little now. A (slight) word of warning, though--I used John Sanden's grays a lot for a while, and still find them useful when I need a certain value warm gray (they have a lot of green in them, to my eye). But again, they kept me from learning about the richer approach of mixing complements, and in some passages just letting the chroma sing a little more. So I'm trying to wean off. Marvin Mattleson's palette also helped some with this.

But it's a worthy exercise you're conducting. I sat in on a talk by Laura Clark, PSOA's 2004 Grand Prize winner, and something she quoted made me feel better (paraphrasing here): "Great painting isn't always a matter of using brilliant color, but using color brilliantly."

Best--TE

[Richard Budig]

Tom:

No, of course you didn't sound dismissive.

I hope I didn't sound like I took offense. I must confess that in my previous life, I had to make a living, and for some reason, I bought and operated a pawn shop (several, in fact, over the years) for around 30 years. Some of the thing I heard on a daily basis caused me to be a bit "crusty" at times, and while it is not longer necessary to be that way, it still pops out sometimes.

An example or two of eye-popping pawnshop minutiae would include the time a dirty old guy came in and wanted to know if I bought children (really), or wall-eyed guy who kept more than 60 ducks in his trailer home (inside, where he lived), or the girl who wanted me to rent a house in my name so she could run a "business" out of it. (You'll notice that I'm not in jail.)

So, I, too, can be pretty aloof without noticing. But, no, you weren't, and I treasure the little tidbits of info I get from the nice folks in this forum. It's funny, sometimes, how the smallest of comments will open a window and let in a lot of light and understanding.