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Why so many grays? Because colors are not static – every color has an infinite range, including gray. No single color is perfect for every artist, which is why we want you to have the widest range of watercolors in the world. This selection of six different grays was created with the help of three world-renowned artists – Alvaro Castagnet, Jane Blundell, and Joseph Zbukvic.
- Alvaro’s Caliente Grey
- Alvaro’s Fresco Grey
- Jane’s Grey
- Joseph Z’s Warm Grey
- Joseph Z’s Neutral Grey
- Joseph Z’s Cool Grey
Plus we have two more grays for your palette:
“Alvaro’s Caliente Grey is a terrific hue – very powerful – excellent for creating strong and warm paintings. In monochrome, this grey helps you achieve a powerful atmosphere with amazing glow. It’s also perfect for adding dramatic highlights and shadows. Alvaro’s Fresco Grey is a true cool hue with no artificial look to it. Passionate and mysterious, it can evoke distant elements of any kind. It’s about fury, energy and power. Grey can create a feeling of danger, emotion, passion or mystery. It evokes things that are unknown, like darkness. I use these greys to create a painting that has a magnetism with something to discover.” —Alvaro Castagnet
Jane Blundell wanted a grey without the often dulling effect of a black pigment and without the staining effects of Phthalo Blue. She wanted it to be liftable and granulating to create the look of stormy skies and softened shadows. It would also work as a neutral tint by darkening colors without changing them. Using a grey made with your palette colors maintains color harmony. Many artists mix Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna as they work, but no one was making this gorgeous mix as a convenience color. Initially she mixed it in individual pans and palettes but the demand from her students meant she started to make it in tubes. Now DANIEL SMITH makes her Jane’s Grey available to artists everywhere.
Looking Across at Hunter’s Hill
“Joseph Z’s Warm Grey is perfect for strong summer light, when shadows have that rich warm glow. It’s particularly useful for painting late afternoon light effects with its pinkish hue when diluted into lighter washes. It can capture that evening glow perfectly. Joseph Z’s Neutral Grey is perfect for those strong, New York type cityscapes. When undiluted, it’s basically black and can provide powerful monolithic shapes without looking chalky. It gives a look of charcoal drawing or old-fashioned photographs. Joseph Z’s Cool Grey was designed to use for those frosty morning and rainy winter day paintings. It has a lovely greenish sediment which is perfect for low light and early morning light effects. I think it’s a must for anyone painting winter scenes.” —Joseph Zbukvic
Single pigment Gray Titanium is a mid-tone warm gray with slightly yellow undertones. It’s semi-transparent, granulating, non-staining and has excellent lightfastness. The color and granulation make it wonderfully useful for dusty desert animals such as deer, elephants and tortoises, as well as for birds whose feathers offer good camouflage for blending into their environment, like the roadrunner and burrowing owl. In landscapes, granulating Gray Titanium is beautiful for trees and shrubs whose trunks, branches and twigs are light-colored and textured. Urban landscapes benefit from Gray Titanium as well, with light washes that suggest concrete structures. As a single pigment, Gray Titanium mixes wonderfully with other colors, adding both warmth and softness due to its semi-transparent/semi-opaque characteristic.
A lovely pinkish, cool brown in light washes and a medium reddish maroon in mass tone (think red cedar bark), Red Jasper Genuine is granulating, semi-transparent, non-staining and has excellent lightfastness. It’s is a wonderful color for landscapes, birds like the male common chaffinch and reddish egret, as well as animals who have a medium to light reddish coat, like the red panda. The mineral for our Red Jasper Genuine comes from India’s Gwalior region and is colored a rich red from iron. Historically it was often carved for amulets, vases and other decorative items. India’s red jasper was one of the stones used to beautifully embellish the Taj Mahal, along with other semi-precious stones that were carved and inlaid into the white marble in curvilinear flower forms. The flowers formed from red jasper are a vivid red and contrast beautifully with the green jade stems and leaves against the white marble. Spiritually, red jasper is associated with the base or root chakra and helps to ground and energize the body and provide balance and protection.
