Bluff, Jasper & Cedar

Bluff, Jasper & Cedar: Grays to Quicken the Imagination

Published on in grays, paint, putting paint to canvas

Bluff, Jasper & Cedar: Grays to Quicken the Imagination

Nuanced in color and tone, Bluff and Jasper evoke an unreachable and unknowable sense of space or existence. In a mixture, each of these chromatic grays, at opposite ends of the value scale, invites one’s imagination to see the presence of atmosphere, time and distance. Cedar, a gray that is quite green and full of sunlight, captures our attention with its warmth and natural glow.

Bluff: Light Out of Reach

At left is a tint of our Bluff with the Video Blue. Bluff unmixed is at top and the Video Blue right out of the tube is below, it at right.

Both neutral and gently warm, our Bluff is highly effective in modifying cold bright colors in a mixture. Used like an opaque warm white, Bluff’s resulting tint has softened edges and atmospheric warmth that recedes in the picture plane.

Bluff, at top, and below as a tint with our Cadmium Green Light. At top right is the Cadmium Green Light unmixed.

Jasper: Darkness Melting into Air

Jasper is a subtle green gray with unique mixing characteristics. If you only tinted it with whites, to make wonderfully smoky grays, it would be a fabulous addition to your palette!

Jasper, in the large tube size, with the mass tone behind it at left and mixed into varying tints made with our Titanium-Zinc White.

Deep in value, warm yet neutral, Jasper can bring a sense of invading shadow to a mixture as it tames brightness, and imparts a dark haziness. And maybe even a touch of mystery.

Jasper, at top right, and our unmixed Ruby Red below it. At left is the mixture that has changed both the value and tone of the Ruby Red.
Jasper at top left, and our unmixed Cadmium Green Light at bottom left. At right is a now deeper, warmer and more nuanced green mixture.

Cedar: Sunlight on View

The most distinctly green of our chromatic grays, Cedar can easily depict the warmth of sunlight on foliage in a landscape, right out of the tube. Its rich pigmentation offers both opacity and a strong yellow undertone making Cedar equally ideal for mixing, even to make other greens or modify existing ones.

Bluff, Jasper & Cedar
Cedar at top left and our Video Blue at right. At bottom, center, is the resulting green created by mixing the two. Cedar mixed like a yellow but deepened the blue as it modified its brightness with warmth.

Cedar, as a gray, has the ability to impart a degree of shadow along with its warmth. Mixed with our intensely bright Ruby Red, Cedar acts as a green complement to create another colorful neutral or to read as a deep warm shadow.

Cedar at the upper left corner and Ruby Red at right. The resulting mixture is deep but still richly warm and colorful.

Bluff, Jasper and Cedar, as grays, modify the intensity of other colors and mixtures to suggest varying degrees of distance, atmosphere, and light. Find them in our complete set of chromatic grays, A Set of Color and Light, or individually on our website here.

Jasper, shown full strength, at left, is then tinted by the Bluff into softly pink grays at top center of photo. At right is our Cedar that is then combined with Bluff at bottom center.

Bluff

Jasper

Cedar

Bluff can be used as a warm opaque white, as shown above, tinting our Ruby Red into a unique version of pink open to interpretation: warm, dusty, atmospheric, Mountbatten, antique, …?

8 Comments

  1. joyce snyder
    February 17, 2019 at 11:56 am  ·  Reply

    I look forward every week to your informative videos and the use of your colors with each other. A lesson each time on the history and enjoyment of art and color. Thank you

    • Gail Spiegel
      February 19, 2019 at 5:48 pm  ·  Reply

      Hello Joyce,
      Thank you for visiting our blog and for the positive reviews!
      We appreciate your generous support of our colors and valuable feedback.
      -Gail

  2. V
    February 24, 2019 at 3:46 pm  ·  Reply

    Hello Gail, can you please post more videos ?

    Thank You!

    • Gail Spiegel
      February 27, 2019 at 8:26 pm  ·  Reply

      Hello V,
      Nice to hear from you and hope you are enjoying your colors. We are working on filming and posting more to our website and blog…we will let you know.
      Thank you for your request and generous support,
      -Gail

  3. Stuart
    February 25, 2019 at 10:03 pm  ·  Reply

    The samples are inviting Tickles my imagination

  4. Wayne Burt
    April 18, 2019 at 11:06 am  ·  Reply

    As always it is a joyful and learned experience reading and listening to Gail’s expertise on colour .
    She gives voice to the silence of colour!

    • Gail Spiegel
      April 20, 2019 at 4:51 pm  ·  Reply

      Hello Wayne,
      Thank you for your thoughts on color! Your support is always appreciated.
      Best regards,
      -Gail

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