[Tom Edgerton]

Ken--

Neutral gray in the generic sense, not a specific brand or color out of the tube. It's a mixing discussion, not a purchasing one.

You can gray down colors essentially two ways--mix them with their complement or mix them with gray. The gray can be mixed with black and white or any of a thousand other combinations of colors. A black and white mix will yield a rather cool gray, black and white being more or less both cool colors. On the other hand, you might want to mix a more warmish neutral gray into whatever color you're trying to gray down. Experimentation yields knowledge.

It's just that mixing a color with its complement will generally gray it down faster, and may yield a more sumptuous result.

I won't speak for Marvin, but when I want to gray down a color, I just look for a neutral gray that's somewhere on the palette already, with a warm or cool cast that I want, and grab some of that. Or I use the complement, as described above. In the case of Marvin's specific palette, he has a row of neutral grays already mixed in each of the ten values on his scale, made from raw umber, black and white. Obviously, I'm a lot sloppier and less disciplined.

If the value of the gray or complement being added is the same value as the color you're trying to neutralize, the value won't shift--an important idea for us tonalists.

Marvin, correct any of this you wish. Good to have seen you the other week.

Best--TE