Jane and Iona

[Garth Herrick]

Originally Posted by Renee Price

Dear Garth,

I mixed 9 values of neutral (ivory black, raw umber, & flake white), 9 values of yellow ochre (adding raw umber to darken values), 9 values of red ochre & 9 values of Indian Red (adding ivory black to darken and flake white to lighten). It took several days to tube them all, but it's so much easier to squeeze out only what I need. Later I added ultramarine in values 5, 6, & 7, and asphaltum in values 1, 2, & 3.

I would love to know more about the referencing system you developed. All those values! Wow! What colors did you use?

Again, your painting is excellent!

Renee

Renee,

You are amazing to have mixed and tubed so many colors you can really use in a portrait! What I simply did was mix proportions of Ivory Black and Titanium White (both Old Holland, the Titanium white is pure titanium, no zinc) merely for the purpose of value comparison. I am not painting with these grays, well not much. They are rather cold grays. I found that the particular black and white I used had about as close to equal tinting strength relative to each other as it probably gets, which was great for keeping track of proportions. For this equality it was important that there was no zinc presence in the white. Some day it would be nice to catch up to you and have some colors ready-tubed in nine values, or so.

Garth