The Next Time You're on Jeopardy

I learned an interesting little tidbit of information to day in 2D: how to "grey" down a color.

When you're painting, you don't add black or brown to a color to "grey" it down because then you will end up with muddy colors that look icky. Instead, you add a color's compliment to it to make it into a "grey." But that's not all, even if you a color's compliment (red/green, blue/orange, yellow/violet), you may still end up with a muddy mess. SO, you add that color's secondary compliment to get a nice grey.

For instance, in the painting I'm working on now, I have a shade of Yellow-green (actually, it's green, but to get that color, I had to use a heck of a lot more yellow than I did blue to get it) that my teacher told me was too saturated (too pure). So, he told me to add Violet to grey it down.

How, may you ask, did he arrive at that descision? Well, simply refer to the color wheel... to arrive at the correct greying compliment, find your color's actual compliment and then take one step counter-clockwise on the color wheel (always one step counter-clockwise) and you have the correct mixture.

Example: the color I'm working with is Yellow-green. Yellow-green's actual compliment on the color wheel is Red-violet, BUT, take one step counter-clockwise, and the correct greying compliment is Violet. Viola!

So, the next time you're on Jeopardy and Alex Trebek is grilling you about the greying compliment of Yellow-green, you'll know the answer: Violet.