Power In The Grays 

I learned this by accident as a teenager, while painting a warm yellow scene. :) I kept trying to paint the cold blue shadows I saw and it didn't look right. Inadvertently, I got that blue mixed into my orange on the messy palette. I didn't realise I'd made grey until a smudge ended up on the canvas. And my mind was blown. It looked PERFECT. I suddenly realised I didn't want blue at all for those cold shadows, I wanted a cold yellow-grey, and ~20 years later it's still one of my favourite landscape paintings I've done. Thank you for this excellent video!

That demonstration at 8:05 is mind blowing. Even though I know color relativity exists, it always surprises me. The fact that a gray can look purple or green by desaturating and just barely adjusting the hue is incredible☺

As a guy who has drawn almost exclusively in pen & ink since he was a kid, and whose favorite artists [excluding Jack Kirby!] overwhelmingly work with muted, desaturated color palettes, I can't thank you enough for the lessons packed into this video. Once you get it - you've got it, like a light going off. [Of course, you still have to decide if it's a warm or a cool light!]

This reminded me greatly of what my painting teacher told the class all the time. She compared us (Latvians) to the south-west of Europe (like Italy and Spain) and told us that we are lucky to learn painting here because there are so much gray tones. Instead of direct light and bright colours we have overcast days, dull streets, but she always ended with the fact that gray is the most colourful colour there is, gray is every colour. And the moral of that was that we can see more colours that artists in the west so we need to learn to use them. (she also didn't let us use black and when you mix your own black it becomes very colourful)

Artist Thomas Kinkade used greys like this to make his lights pop all the time. Great technique.

I’ve heard many say they don’t want to start with a white canvas. You finally gave the real reason - that it messes with whatever color you’re painting with. That helps do much, thank you.

Literally just discovered this a little while ago in my own experimentation. It's as if the grayer the color is, the less you need to shift the hue. Techniques like this is how you can achieve very dreamy and realer than real vibrant colors, without even making the colors super saturated.

This video is a game-changer -- this same concept can be used in other mediums too. I struggled a lot with color theory and color matching, especially in the past when I wouldn't take the time to plan out my color palette before starting. Using saturation, value, temperature, etc. to your advantage takes your pieces to entirely new levels. So as my mother-in-law tells me now that I'm nearing 40.... "Embrace those greys."

This is so eye-opening! Knowing the theory is one thing, but seeing it happening in real time as you’re explaining it takes this lesson to another level. Your various real-life anecdotes are also super helpful. Thanks so much!

I thought I knew color pretty well. It turns out I did not, I just cranked out the most accurate atmospheric color study I’ve ever done. Thank you I didn’t even realize I wasn’t utilizing enough greys.

I had to scrape my jaw off the floor. WHOA!!! Never learned anything like this in college!! THANK YOU!!

I keep thinking "Josef Albers" while watching this. Excellent video.

In just three videos this guy has changed my whole perspective on art. I went from anxious to intrigued to start digital painting.😂

My God, the value of the information in this video alone can not be overstated. I’m not a digital artist, but this is just such a great lesson that it really doesn’t matter in the slightest. These are the kinds of insider tips, tricks, and secrets that people pay thousands of dollars to learn in their journey to professionalism and you are here on RU-vid freely teaching others, thank you sir. I’m going to hunt for a way to compensate you somehow, but at least for now I can subscribe and support your channel. Yes, I am aware I sound like a robot, no I am not a robot and I have not been paid to make these statements. Dammit, now it sounds even MORE like I’m a robot, oh well, just watch the video, you’ll see that I’m not lying lol

That technique where you desaturate and pull the color wheel towards the color you want is CRAZYYY!! Keep it up bro that was insane!!

@3:43 as a dental nurse who has to select color shades for the teeth, this reminded me of the same logic on why we have to select it in natural and artificial lighting. And how blue walls help “reset” our eyes, as so they said.

This is exactly why ‘the dress’ was perceived so differently by people. It was because with no context people had to assume the lighting conditions and therefore the colour of the dress as well. Great video, I found the concept very well explained and illustrated!

Amazing. As a sound engineer, this was not only teaching me about visual art but reminded me that as a mixing engineer we need to remember that bass and treble are just ornaments and the bulk of the mix lives in the mid frequencies.

I looked at the painting by the pre Raephalites and the way they use colour is amazing. And they had no devices.

Oh. My. God. 10 minutes after watching this video, I realized that gray in digital is kinda like an opposite color in traditional art!!! AMAZING Usually, in traditional art we add, for example, violet to yellow to make it more neutral / less saturated. In digital, we can do the same, by just using shades of grayness.... This is the main idea between understanding how digital and traditional arts works.

This video nearly made me cry with relief. I have nearly a decade of painting experience and yet somehow really struggle with subtle hue shifts (I am a childrens book illustrator so I often work with very bright saturated palettes) and I was 100% that person using green and purple on the canvas instead of desaturated yellow. You explained this so simply and effectively, I am in your debt!

Wow. Every video you create feels like being let in on a mind blowing secret. It's like magic to me.

The title should be "how to select color on your digital divice"! Finally I find the Decode of the magic, that answered my confusion since I did digital painting!!!

I wish they’d make watching your videos a pre-requisite for any You Tuber before allowing any posts: no cheesy humor, no repeat, no assuming your audience are pros or stupid, no pauses or blanks, no cluttered background, no poor grammar and actual usable real time instruction. Wow. I am in your debt for this. Well done sir. I sincerely hope you teach (literally) since you have the gift. Thank you.

:-) MIND BLOWING! I have seen this exact thing when studying reference paintings for my art, but did not understand what was going on. I was seeing a colour but my colour picker was telling me differently! This is a super powerful tool, thank you!

I think this is the first color relativity video I've seen that actually explains the mechanics of _how_ to do it, not just why it happens. Thank you so much, you're a great teacher!

Thank you a lot! The fact that every color come from kind of the same hue has awed me. I have learn something new, and I definitely wanna give it a try.

This is amazing, I've heard of this concept multiple times but this tutorial on what to DO about it is a game changer.

I knew what color relativity was but to see your examples and follow along with you makes all the more sense. Watching the "purple and green" part of the painting process actually made my jaw drop. Thank you so much for these videos!!!!

This is amazing. Both the concept, the theory, how it holds up in practice, and how simple you explain it for everyone to understand. Concise and to the point. This video is gold. Thanks for sharing this! ❤

I've seen a lot of videos like "top 10 tips for beginner artists" and have always wondered where are the videos with tips for pro artists? We need advice too! And here it is - thank you so much! What a beautiful way to put it, and there is something intricate about the subtleties of color perception that makes this knowledge so precious.

This is mind blowing! So many color theory videos just barely scratch the surface, or dont go in depth about how you can actually use color temperature in a practical way. You can see the results so clearly here! Thank you so much!

I watch a lot of RU-vid on art, for years, and there has been only a few that have altered my view significantly; this is one of them. Brilliant, and thank you for sharing this, really, You didn’t have to, and it is very much appreciated. Best.

Yesterday I watched one of Marco Bucci’s lessons on ambient occlusion (ambient light, bounced light, occlusion shadow) and this video complemented it like a charm It really does make sense that the colours aren’t exactly what we think they are, because of the way light and colour work For example the trees, they are dessaturated and kind of a mix between orange and green, because the green trees are getting hit by the ambient light (which is orange) in this case, which makes them look warmer than the regular green we assign to plants but cooler than the usual sunset orange Our eyes aren’t tricking us, but our brains are, because most of our senses identify things based on how they look/feel in relation to another of the same nature (scale, texture, value, hue, pitch, object temperature, pressure, smell, etc)

I never understood color theory or anything like this until I found your videos and now I feel like a whole new world completely opened up for me. Thank you so much for teaching this. I have been struggling with making art and I've wanted to give up but this makes me inspired to keep doing it.

Thank you so much for this!! I've looked at lots videos that teach color relativity but yours is what enlightened me the most. Thank you for doing what you do! I hope the best for you and your channel!

I've known about color relativity from books but seeing it here is really mind-blowing. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, man. Would love to watch your next videos. I'll keep coming by.

"even this green is orange" this is wild

I paint using actual media not digital, but YT tossed this in my recommended videos. What you are describing is something artists have been doing for hundreds of years.. underpainting, using neutral grey palettes for mixing, use of "mother" colors (selecting one color as a base for mixing everything else on the canvas), and complementary blending (using the complement of a hue to desaturate). Once upon a time art students were expected to master not only color mixing but the representation of light, shadow and form with black and white first, then complementary duos, then various primary trios. Only then were they allowed a larger palette of colors. I feel like too many artists these days are missing the most basic foundational skills and understanding of the science of art in their rush to shortcut the process.

holy crap, it all makes sense now. what is incredible that you show is, even with all your knowledge and experience - you are still trying to figure out what colors your eyes see and replicate it. I always thought at one point, as an expert/ professional - you just know. thank you so much. I'm not color blind, but figured creatively I was

Yes! Also there is infinity variety in greys compared to primaries and secondaries or even tertiaries in terms of chroma and that means the potential for subtleties in relative colour harmony is also tremendous. It’s amazing how sensitive human perception is to the subtlest of colour relationships.

Thank you so much for teaching us, Jeremy. Most of the time I got disgusted by my color choices exactly like 7:15 and I'm so confused and don't know why, but now I know!! Thank you so much!! Finding your channel is one of the highlights of 2024 for me!!! I learned so much from you Jeremy, and Ratatouille is my absolute favorite movie ever, my eyes teared up when you said you worked on the movie..

this is probably one of the best things about color I have ever learned.

gray = value > color one advice for the beginners, try to train your eyes to see in values and not in colors and all of these things will start to make more sense to you, in the meantime you can open a grayscale copy of your document to see your values as you paint, (photoshop users go to the WINDOWS tab > Arrange > New window for "your piece name" then go to the VIEW tab > Proof setup > custom > dot gain 20%(this is the best option to work in gray scale in PS) also the command for switching between gray and colors(rgb) is ctrl + Y (you can edit it if you want to assign another shorcut to check your values) REMEMBER! ALWAYS CHECK YOUR VALUES, if your values are right, you can put any color you want and your painting still gonna looks good! sry for my english! VALUES > COLORS! 🧐

I found you last week, and I just wanted to thank you so much! I sometimes don't paint for a while and get super rusty and insecure while painting, but your color study video really helped me to shift my mindset from painting "things" to painting "shapes", making it MUCH easier 😊

This is the only color theory video that made sense to me, thx

Second major aesthetic mind blow after I discovered tonal relativity in music !!! Thank you for you clarity.

I honestly think you've just revolutionised my art forever. Thank you so much for this!

Another incredible video. This is really helping with my oil painting.

Yes...please do not stop! I'm not a digital artist, but rather a painter. All this still applies! You've given me a new way to think about how to mix my colors. I definitely would have started with a purple and then try to desaturate it. Never would have thought to start with my yellow and desaturate that will moving it "toward" the purple!

Holy shit this video was mind blowing. I could watch you color pick for hours, that was incredible! Definitely gonna incorporate this into my color studies. Thank you so much ❤❤

Very educative. I would find interesting to see the same process of color relativity applied to the making of an original painting (not trying to reproduce the same hues and values from an already existing painting). The rationale behind the choice of colors is be key for the further improvement of my artwork. Thanks again for this high quality video.

Thanks! This is awesome. I learned this in landscape watercolors. There is a whole world of grays that are created through complementary color mixing. That’s when I finally understood warm and cool grays, as well as the spectrum of gray “color.” Very helpful to have this demonstrated digitally!

Do a detailed series of this mate - Here on RU-vid - it's a wonderful way for us aspiring filmmakers to learn something new! Go King!

I've tried to find how to actually do this and this is the only one I've found with an explanative demonstration. Thank you so much

It's been 2 years since I've had so much motivation to draw again! Thank you for your latest how to videos! Especially the color relativity is one that explains exactly what i have been struggling with without even knowing it. I'll be starting my color studies asap i already picked a few art pieces of your "amazing light" pin board and took a few pictures of props around te house!

This is brilliant! Thank you for sharing this. Love the story of the red wall in your work on The Incredibles (one of the best animated films of all time), Ratatouille as well. Mind is officially blown with this concept of color!!

IT IS AMAZING! YOU ARE AMAZING! For ~5 years I am finally get this idea of color relativity! I always struggle with that and never understand how exactly it's working! Thank you so much for opening my eyes! ♥

Ahh, I've always referred to/considered this as painting with light but this video explains it far better than I ever have. Thanks for the excellent demonstration & knowledge!

You have a real gift for explaining a very complex subject. I've now shared this video all my artist friends. I am surprised, though, that so many artists are unaware of Joseph Albers work at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain and Yale that delves very deeply into this same territory. I highly recommend his book, Interaction of Color, published by Yale University Press.

Is the dress black and blue or gold and white?

I CANNOT Thank You ENOUGH for making this video. You DO NOT KNOW how long I've been searching how to do this, I'll never forget the help you've given me honestly I could cry right now. Also huge thanks to RU-vid for giving this in my recommendation page cause I wouldn't have ever found it on my own

Wow wow wow!! This tip has totally changed my painting career by far. God blesse you🙌🏾

Listening to this feels like I'm in Art School, thanks for teaching your professional knowledge

I learned in college painting that gray is the most varied and beautiful thing in so many paintings. Grays can be any color. any temperature, and the interplay between them can add such a luminous quality to a piece.

I have kind of started with color relativity without knowing. I asked a person how they know how to choose the color that they would like to look cool on the warm spit and they said that they desaturated the base color. So I tried that too for the shading of an illustration. And the difference it creates and the way it all looks so much more harmonizing and belonging together as a whole picture is CRAZY. Thank you SO much for that video!

Whoa this was super cool! Thanks for making this video!

4 seconds in and I subscribed. Instantly knew that this would be an important channel to glean from.

Jeremy, you beautiful genius! Thank you for sharing your wisdom.🤩 Thank you Kelsey for interviewing and introducing us to him.❤🎉

THANK YOU omg this is why I can't get my paintings to look right you just cracked my brain open like an egg

This is one of the most helpful videos I've seen about color usage in art! You have a real gift in teaching and making your demonstrations really impactful. Thank you

I want to put this video on the altar and pray to it every day

You are the Bob Ross of digital painters. I am learning to see the world differently through your lessons. THANK YOU.

I subbed within the first minute. The practical advise and the quick explanations with real life parallels are so masterful. Not only are you a great artist but a great teacher!

Best explanation of color relativity I’ve seen so far, and the demos are great! Please keep posting videos like this! Thank you!

1 minute in and I'm already mind blown! Thank you so much for making these videos, you're amazing. Love the way you explain these incredibly useful concepts

One of the most important tutorials I've seen this year. In 17 and a half minutes you've impacted my images tremendously. Thank you sir.

This video was such an eye opener for me. As a beginning watercolor artist, I struggle with color mixing and found your explanation of color relativity profoundly helpful! I look forward to exploring your other videos.

This is so cool. Mostly it's information I've heard before, but you SHOW it while explaining what's happening and why. And that really makes it click. Thank you very much for sharing the no doubt of years learning this yourself, and then plenty more time putting together how you can show and tell it to us. This video is a masterpiece of teaching. Thank you.

Man I love this video, I just keep coming back to it and every time I do I pick up another invaluable, mind blowing tidbit of information. Thank you so much for sharing so much value with us!

I never get tired of watching this video again and again. There always something more to learn. Many thanks.

this is the actual first time a “color theory” related video has made sense to me, in a way where my brain actually digested it in a way of being applicable in the future wow! ive subconsciously been using more grey tone colors but the was you described this was amazing especially the part about blocking the shapes (+colors) out relating to the colorfinding as in, it helps you see the colors in relativety, together, and thus you can find the roght tones faster! i never understood exactly what blocking in the shapes can be a tool/path for and often wound up blocking them in but disregarding the tones or colors (because i thought it was just about shape) and then wound up trying to color certain areas, but later realizing the tones were off when i got to the other side of the image this has FINALLY untied that knot for me and made it make sense haha thank you!

This is the best tutorial on colors that I have ever seen, thank you!

this was so incredible and fascinating!!! Don’t t worry too much about the length of your videos, they are so educational and helpful I appreciate every second!!

Yeah, my mind blew. So many times I’ve tried to go right to the colour I think I see. Thanks for this!

This is fantastic video. Your channel is a true gem. Thank you!

Man, what I’ve learned during this video is priceless. I’ve followed you since your gnomon dvd on color all those years ago. I think you’re the best man. Thank you.

In every minute of this video, my brain just blows off. Super content. Really learn something.

I've watched one and a half of your videos and I love your channel! Definitely hoping you continue to upload. Thank you so much.

I just found my new fav channel. Immediately applied this on a quick paint. Thank you!

Beautiful tutorial, and very helpful. I also appreciated the calming music in the background.

I've never seen a better video explaining this concept!

This demonstrates a concept I read about in James Gurney's Color and Light but I never grasped how it worked. Thankyou so much for this. It's going to make a huge difference in my painting.

This is why my idea of ideal color palette will be like a color wheel but gradually become grey as going toward the center and there's separate handle that control the center value all the way to the black from white.

Super excited to find your videos ! Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, they are so helpful for teaching.

Wow. You’re needed on this platform, please don’t go anywhere. I’ve been dreaming of a teacher like this for so long. I’ve learned more about color in these 15 minutes than I ever have in that short of a time span. This is what I’ve been looking for. Such amazing information. Please, I’d like to thank you personally.

These videos are so helpful! You have a gift for explaining it really well and the visuals help a bunch!

This video was really helpful to understand how color actually works together. Thank you

Great teacher.... love your movies you have worked on. Thank you for sharing. I learned a lot.

Thank you for your beautiful tutorials. Looking forward to learning more from your artful videos.