mixing gray scale

  • Thread starter crash bandicoot
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I'm still not with the whole grey scale thing .... I just wing it till it looks right.
There was a gray scale Tut on the old forum which was recent which shoed the checkered squares ..... That did my head in!
Mybe you can't teach old dogs new tricks? :(
I'm with you oddball, I'm a winger. Does it look ok - yes - that'll do Lol. It's this attitude that has got me where I am today, which is .............oh. nowhere!......hmmmmmmmmmm. LOL!!!!! Oh well, if it looks right to me, and no one tells me any different, then a winger I shall forever be :)
 
The Grey scale comes from The Photographic field in the days of Silver Halide film camera's. That be your run of te mill 35mm film :)
Colour or B/W didnt matter. All camera's read the light emited thro the lens to a photo cell to tell you the recommended exposure setting. The key word here was 'Recommended' Non of us as students ever relied upon it, Because we would be manipulating the image it in the dark room anyway.

Point is. Learn to mix on the fly. As Rebal said. Find a Mid Grey and stick to it.
What I would add here is. Make this Mid Grey scale your base. DO write it down!

Once your into a project. Work on your scales. If and when you adjust. Make Notes and write them down so you can replicate them.
Lastly... This may or may not be relivent any more. but, AA use to be bad for Pigment suspension drop out when reduced and left over night.
So mix your Shade. But DONT reduce until your ready to use it. This will keep a much better consistency with your Mixture.

Dan
 
is there a mistake on this

No mistake. It is a 63:1 ratio. Notice 5 drops (as opposed to 1 for the others) of black listed with 315 drops of white for the 20% value which is the same as 1 drop of black and 63 drops of white. Not sure why I typed it with the larger mix. Sorry for the confusion!
 
This may work if you're laying down a lot of paint, but that's not how airbrushing works. I can take pure black, and make a 10 step greyscale. This has no accountability for the thinness of a layer of paint.
 
The main reason you would want a chart, IMO, is for consistency. So you can go back and forth and not have to guess or end up with off looking shades. Or maybe you have a color formula 3 drops red, 1 drop 40% gray. You can always go back to it vs. trying to re-match it. Saves paint and time.

Say you start on a base 30%... make a huge mistake and want to redo an area. Just base it back to 30% and retrace your steps. It's almost the same thing as the new createx illustration Air, Oil, and Lead kits.
 
This may work if you're laying down a lot of paint, but that's not how airbrushing works. I can take pure black, and make a 10 step greyscale. This has no accountability for the thinness of a layer of paint.

There is more than one way to paint greyscale, and thinned out black is just one, and not the best at that.
 
The main reason you would want a chart, IMO, is for consistency. So you can go back and forth and not have to guess or end up with off looking shades. Or maybe you have a color formula 3 drops red, 1 drop 40% gray. You can always go back to it vs. trying to re-match it. Saves paint and time.

Say you start on a base 30%... make a huge mistake and want to redo an area. Just base it back to 30% and retrace your steps. It's almost the same thing as the new createx illustration Air, Oil, and Lead kits.
Just a little tip I have done for consistency, is but cheap 1 oz. twist bottles off Amazon. I recently worked on a mural in a private residence (really it was just a really big painting on a full size sheet of birch plywood) from the end of December to mid June. That was 6 months of working on the same project daily. Since it was a forest scene, I had mixed up a lot of custom greens. I used these bottles to keep the custom mixes in, as I would need them day after day. When done, yeah I had some leftover paint, but I didn't waste it, as it's just now more colors added to my bottle arsenal. And I didn't have to worry about color matching cup after cup.
 
There is more than one way to paint greyscale, and thinned out black is just one, and not the best at that.
Didn't say I just used thinned out black, and actually black and grey are some of my least used colors. But counting out 100's of drops is just a waste of time, I don't know any experienced painter who is measuring ratios that exactly. You can mix up three tints, and cover the entire range.

Also what's this I hear about new createx paint? Not a fan of createx, i'm an E'TAC user mostly, maybe some Golden High Flows as a backup.
 
Didn't say I just used thinned out black, and actually black and grey are some of my least used colors. But counting out 100's of drops is just a waste of time, I don't know any experienced painter who is measuring ratios that exactly. You can mix up three tints, and cover the entire range.

Also what's this I hear about new createx paint? Not a fan of createx, i'm an E'TAC user mostly, maybe some Golden High Flows as a backup.

http://www.airoilandlead.com/createx-colors.html

I don't have the kit, because I do believe 9 shades is a bit too much. I might get it anyways, who knows . My paint collection is stacking up but my output isn't.

I have E'tac as well. No bad words to say about it. Createx seems to be pushing the ball forward while everyone else is just chilling on the same products they've been offering for years.
 
Thanks leaky, yeah I noticed fuzzy l foxy dropped e'tac recently in favor of acrylic inks. I have some liquatex ink that I got for free when a rep came to my university. It does spray pretty nice, but I was looking at those Schmicke (or however you spell it) Aero Colors from Germany. They look real interesting, and if a true acrylic they should work with my current acrylics.
 
Just recently bought Createx Illistrations oil,air and lead Grisaille set. Something you could look at picked mine up at Spraygunner.
 
I have E'tac as well. No bad words to say about it. Createx seems to be pushing the ball forward while everyone else is just chilling on the same products they've been offering for years.

Pre-mixing colours and creating sets is not much of a ball being pushed. You don't see Winsor & Newton or Sennelier or any of the other top end brands come up with new colours or sets. It's like record companies creating compilation albums. All the songs are available already, they just put it together on one album.
 
Pre-mixing colours and creating sets is not much of a ball being pushed. You don't see Winsor & Newton or Sennelier or any of the other top end brands come up with new colours or sets. It's like record companies creating compilation albums. All the songs are available already, they just put it together on one album.

Well lets see here. I know createx isn't building a space ship to visit other planets or anything, but for a paint company they seem to be doing far more than any other.
They just came out with a new heavy duty outdoor line.. Scenix Line
They came out with a Primer/Sealer line.. Autoborne Sealers
They have been actively working with artists to create color pallets in the illustration line. Bloodline, Lifeline, Air, Oil, Lead Grisaille method.
They created a water based Candy paint line
They created multiple additives and reducers. 4012 actually works really well, but it appears to be a simple mixture.
The autoair line has a tremendous amount of options for customizing. Pearls, Flakes, Metals
Createx also makes other model paints on the market under other labels.

All this for the Airbrush artists and Spray painter. So tell me where any other company even compares in the slightest to what Createx has done and is currently doing. No other brand has it's nose in the airbrush/spray painting industry like Createx.

E'tac hasn't done squat. Trident is a joke unless you live in Australia. Badger actually has an alright collection, but it has no advertisement that I see. Golden is quality, but they aren't really involved in airbrush, it's more of an afterthought.
 
The other companies does not have to do anything. Their target market is not the same as Createx's. You can say the same about Standox, PPG etc. Why aren't they developing stuff for artists instead of just focusing on the automotive stuff. Schmincke also has a new waterbased candy line. But that is in Europe and who knows if it will make it to the US. And Trident/DNA in Australia has tons of nice effects. But if it makes it to the US is another thing. Just because brands are not available to you doe not mean that they are not developing or interesting.
 
Pre mixing pallettes IMO really is just a gimmicky convenience.

Scenix has been out for a long time...but I think they recently completely changed the type of paint it is...not a good thing to do. Confusing. I think it was originally trying to compete with Rosco and other scenic/sign paint, which are just latex w no filler base pigment like house paint has. Now it's totally different.
For cheap waterborne automotive though, they're killing it. It really is just that though.. cheap waterborne, it doesn't stand up to any quality urethane available. Ppg is really just starting to get waterborne that meet mfg standards,after years of development and at insanely high prices. while most cheap urethanes already do.
DNA seems to be trailing behind copycatting alsa.
As an airbrush paint though, I'm a fan, they have all the needed options under one roof and a simple additive system that allows a lot of versatility.
I don't like that they seem to have a habit of changing formulas with no change in packaging or any other kind of notification or that they seem to have serious consistency issues from bottle to botlle, all in all... It is what it is.
Airbrush is a tiny market, we get what we get lol
 
For me as a noob this works just fine. It give me a good starting point. Probably you guys which have experience with airbrushing don't have problems like I have, so I need all help I can get lol
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Husky, you have a good system there with your cards and the paint "recipe" you used for the colors. I expect to be doing something similar when I have the time.
 
Husky, you have a good system there with your cards and the paint "recipe" you used for the colors. I expect to be doing something similar when I have the time.
yea, it takes some time. I have 64 ''recipes'' now, but I ain't doing this very long. This month I didn't do any card, cause I wasn't in the right mood. But I have days, when I wanna find one color and I make 3 cards fast. I scuff like 10 of them in a go, and they are waiting in my airbrush section for spraying session.
How useful those ''recipes'' are, probably depend of individual. I can't eyeball colors like many of forum members here lol

For example: I have unopened grey from wicked which I will spray on a card, so I can then find the ''recipe'' of that gray and mix it by myself, cause I tend to buy primary colors in bulk. It is cheaper on long run.

I know createx changes ''recipes'', but this works for me quite good.
 
yea, it takes some time. I have 64 ''recipes'' now, but I ain't doing this very long. This month I didn't do any card, cause I wasn't in the right mood. But I have days, when I wanna find one color and I make 3 cards fast. I scuff like 10 of them in a go, and they are waiting in my airbrush section for spraying session.
How useful those ''recipes'' are, probably depend of individual. I can't eyeball colors like many of forum members here lol

For example: I have unopened grey from wicked which I will spray on a card, so I can then find the ''recipe'' of that gray and mix it by myself, cause I tend to buy primary colors in bulk. It is cheaper on long run.
You're definitely onto something buying large bottles of primaries and get real close with your recipes then dial it in from there for color matching. I'm still such a noob with color mixing yet myself. Not that I've much time to work on that, let alone actually paint lately.
 
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