What a wonderful bunch of posts. All of you said it better than I can.

Play around with your colors. See what they do. The goal is to get to the point where you can mix any color you like without thinking.

Lacey,

At first I thought you might be interested in painting your studio wall with the same color, as I did. The paint can be formulated by Benjamin Moore according to the formula posted by Michael Georges in this thread:

http://forum.portraitartist.com/showthread.php?t=4393

Benjamin Moore & Co.
319-3B

UTC Gallon Formula
OY 3x20.50
BK 2x15.00
OG 0x17.00
GY 0x10.75


It's a fine color for a studio backdrop, and as far as I know it is the same wall paint in use in several well known artist's studios. As I said, I have this color on my walls. I think Mr. Whitaker does too.

For whatever it is worth as far as formulas go, here is the formula in Photoshop! I scanned the wall color with my Gretag-MacBeth Eye-One color spectrometer.

Now you have the Formula!

Garth

Ahh... Someday! I admit, I do need to move the paint around the palette a bit more.

The day I get a studio, or just a room to call my own, it will be painted this color or possibly the "mesa grey" I've seen in discussion on this forum as well.

LOL! I'm going to be giggling for quite a while over that one. :cool:

Seriously, though, thanks for going through all the trouble! Based on that, it looks like I could try out yellow ochre and black.

A very precious gem is buried in this thread - courtesy Steven - the possibilities of blue you can mix with black and white.

As an experiment, open your paint box and tint out each "black" you have stashed there into three or four values of grey. Make a chart so you know what's what tomorrow morning, and dab each line of mixtures onto a warm-toned ground.

For those working in this type of training protocol, where a monochromatic cast painting is slated, ivory black and white can in fact produce such an icy cold blue that you will be unhappy with the result if you do not add something like raw umber to warm it a bit. Otherwise it will appear that you submitted an entry in the St. Paul Winter Carnival's ice sculpture contest.

This tip was serendipitously and generously passed on to me, the advice of yet another (absent by then, on to bigger and better things) student, and it "saved" the piece I was working on. If you have a painting secret, give it away -- it will come back to you many times magnified.