Grey is the colour nobody puts on a wish list and every painter runs out of. This set is black, white and four greys that are deliberately not the same grey, which is the part that makes it useful rather than dull.

Perfect for

Grisaille underpaintingTonal studiesValue scalesPortraitsUrban and industrialMixing and muting

The six colours

Approximate colour reference only. Opacity and lightfastness ratings are Royal Talens' own published figures for each colour.

Why four greys and not one

Because grey has a temperature. Neutral Grey sits in the middle and does not pull the colour it touches in any direction. Warm Grey leans brown, which is what skin, stone and weathered timber actually want. Bluish Grey Light leans cool, which is what distance and shadow want. Payne's Grey is the deep blue leaning shadow colour painters reach for instead of black, because black flattens and Payne's Grey does not.

Mixing those four from scratch every time is the tedious part of tonal painting. Having them in tubes means you spend the time on the picture instead.

Painting in grey before you paint in colour

It is called grisaille, it is several hundred years old, and it still works. You build the whole picture in greys first, settling where the light and the dark go while there is no colour in the way to argue about. Once the values read properly you glaze colour over the top, and the structure underneath does the heavy lifting. Royal Talens publish their own grisaille and grey mixing tutorials, and there is a QR code on the side of the box that takes you straight to them.

What you are actually getting

Every colour in this set carries the highest lightfastness rating Royal Talens award. That is genuinely unusual across a whole set, and it means work made with these is fit to sell and fit to frame.

Questions about the Grey Mixing set