Making a lite transparent gray

[AirTodd]

I can make a transparent gray with white.I like to work in transparents.I am trying to practice on a my black and white pics but still having trouble.I have posted some like this in a different forum.I got good info.Like learn to shade with just black.I have the Daniel Power level 1 dvd.So I see what he is doing.Maybe its me.Any ways.Thanks for the help by who posts.The is my first post on this site.

 

[Seamonkey]

not sure i understand what you want to know?? do you want to learn how to make some grey, or how to paint with just black? to make the grey start with white , say half a bottle and put one drop of black to get a light greay, then just and one drop at a time to get the shade you want. most people dont just use black. the only blak that you will have is in the absolute darkest areas.

 

[RebelAir]

Hey Airtodd, welcome along m8, personally I wouldn't suggest beginners start out with black to learn how to shade, its unforgiving and if you make any mistakes its near impossible to fix and most will end up going way to dark. Again not too sure what the question is but I would suggest 3 shades of grey, light,medium and a charcoal, all being opaque it will give you room to fix any mistakes, try to paint the whole pic in just the light grey, then with your medium start developing your shading then with the charcoal just finish of the darkest area's...keep it flat and don't try to much texture until you master those first 3 basic layers...GL m8

 

[Squishy]

I've done a few black only paintings, These are not the best examples as there is not any high detail such as you would have in a portrait, but (i hope) show that you can get some good contrast and shading. Over reduce your black, (that way it becomes more translucent and give the appearance of greys) and spray in light layers for the lightest tones, and then build up the layers to get the darker/deeper tones and shadows etc, the more layers you add, the darker the paint will become until it eventually builds up back to black. There are way better artists here, who can do and explain this way better, but that's how I do it, and it works for me.

 

[JTairbrush]

Airtodd, for a true transparent gray, you really have to buy it because as soon as you use white to make the gray, its no longer transparent. Adding white to any color, buffers or as Daniel Power says, caps the color and makes it an opaque. I use a technique like Rebelair, mixing a very light, medium and dark opaque gray (mixing black with white). This works very well for creating a black and white painting and the buffered grays prevents you from going too dark.

 

[AndreZA]

If you want to use transparents and do a monochrome picture, then you just over reduce you colour. Anything from 1:10 to even 1:20. You build up the layers to go darker.