Mixing recipe
How to mix cool grey
Target
#8A9099
Recipe mixes to #8D9298
Cool grey is the simplest grey there is: Ivory Black and Titanium White in equal parts. Ivory Black has a blue undertone, so the result is already on the cool side without adding any blue.
The recipe
Step by step
Build the pile from the biggest, lightest component and work toward the strongest tinter. Check the pile against each swatch before moving on.
- Start with 1 part Titanium Whitepile #F6F6F4
- Work in 1 part Ivory Blackpile #8D9298
Another route
A single part of Cerulean Blue in white and black makes it a little bluer and clearer. It is not closer to the target, but it is the one to use for a grey sky or for shadows on white cloth, where plain black and white can look dead.
What goes wrong
Equal parts by volume is not equal parts by strength. Ivory Black is a strong tinter against white, so build this from the white and add the black until the pile matches, rather than measuring both out in advance. If the grey needs to be warmer, a speck of Burnt Umber does it; adding more white only makes it lighter. Ivory Black (tinting strength 4, where a cadmium is 1) is the paint to be careful with here: it goes in last, a knife-tip at a time, and a little too much cannot be mixed back out.
Related colors
Results vary with brand, lighting and medium. Acrylic dries a touch darker than it looks wet. Treat this as a mixing aid, not a lab instrument: it tells you which tubes to reach for and roughly in what proportion. Fine-tune the last stretch by eye.