Color Theory: What Are Neutrals?

Video Transcript

"OK, when you talk about color you can't forget the neutrals. That is, you know, there are times when you need grays, there are times when you need colors that just aren't colors, and obviously, as soon as you say gray you think, black and white make gray. And indeed here is a classic value scale. There's black paint at the bottom, white paint at the top, and these I try to get sort of even increments of grays between light and dark. The average value scale is generally like between nine and twelve steps. It's sort of like a scale. So, this is a scale of black to white. Now, in color, you know, the gray is obviously, doesn't seem to have any color, and neutral really does mean when you can't really make up your mind what the color is. And we played with that a little bit in saturation, and we're going to play with it just a little bit more and do some adjusting. So, I'm going to go back here in my yellow and violet range and see if I can get something that is, you know, how gray, you know, how close to a a gray can I get with out really, with out using black and white. And the answer to that is actually to try to use all the colors, in a way, with out getting too mushed up. So I've got my purple, or violet, and I'm going to, I know that has red and blue in it. So, I've got my yellow and I'm going to add some yellow to it, and I'm going to to stick with the darker yellow for now so that I don't get too messed up here. And we still have a, a dull purple. You know, this is really, this qualifies as the dull purple."