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One of the most annoying mistakes that some artists make is the use of neutral greys in color
works. I may sound overly touchy, but the point is of real significance.
The problem is simple. Neutral greys are what you get when you mix pure black with pure white.
They are achromatic (completely colorless), and, if used together with chromatic
values (all the rest), completely destroy the color scheme. It’s that
simple — and deadly. The presence of colorless spot next to color is about
as good as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
The explosive proliferation of computer use in art is the reason for the growing occurrence of
this problem, since computers (unlike the real paint) are able to produce very perfect neutral
greys. Before, it amounted to the inexperienced painters using black to achieve dark values;
now even otherwise skilled people fall victims to it, provided they used Photoshop. But to say
that computers are to blame would not be fair. Rather, it’s the artists’ unfamiliarity
with color theory that leads to pitfalls. They simply do not know how to notice the disbalance.
Teaching color theory would be a little beyond this short article, but here is a simple
rule-of-thumb that anyone should be able to apply:
Always have a little tint in your greys.
That’s right. Never use Saturation of 0. Never leave all RGB sliders at the same level.
Even if the color’s saturation is very low, it should never be desaturated enough to become
neutral.
This makes sense even from the common point of view. Nature never shows complete perfection such
as found in pure black or white. Gray concrete or grey stone is not colorless; it only has a very
desaturated color, but a color nonetheless. Such materials are most readily receiving tints from
the light, and reflexes from surrounding objects, too, meaning that even if we could make a
perfectly neutral gray, we would need supply it with a neutral white light (which we won’t
get anyway) for it to stay neutral. (In fact, white paper behaves just like that, and white is
about the closest to achromatic value we ever meet in our life.)
Use of black and white, naturally, falls under the same rules; only it is a little less
annoying, because you can reach black or white on the chromatic range, too. But as a rule,
only the brightest spots in a picture can justifiably be white, and only the darkest ones
can be black. In practice, it amounts to bright (blinding) flares and highlights, and to the
pupils of the eyes. Elsewhere you’ll always see color, and so you should paint it.
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