I just made a wonderful new discovery--Torrit Grey. I was befuddled by the promotion at my art supply store, which promised me a free tube of Torrit Grey paint if I bought a certain amount of goods. I did some research, and here's what I found out.
Gamblin Artists Colors is one of the large paint manufacturers in the US. Their factory uses an air filtration system made by a company called Torit. The air filters trap dry pigments that escape into the air during the paint mixing process. Every spring, Gamblin cleans out its air filters. Instead of taking the pigment dust from the filters and dumping it in the landfill, they use it to make a special paint, which they call "Torrit Grey". Isn't that the coolest thing?
Because the combination of pigments cleaned out of the filters is never the same from year to year, the color Torrit Grey is never the same either. Recently, Gamblin has started labeling the tubes of Torrit Grey with the year of manufacture. So now we painters can collect tubes from various "vintage years", if you will, just like we would collect wines from different vintage years. It's a limited edition pigment!
Not only is Gamblin's approach very earth-friendly, it has the added lure of the mysterious: You never know what the next batch will be like until you open it. I am loving the 2013 batch---a beautiful dark grey, it makes a lovely soft grey when mixed with white. It almost has a slight violet cast...see photo below.
Torrit Grey is also great mixed with other colors. In his book "Landscape Painting Inside & Out", Kevin Macpherson advocates for scraping your palette as you work, and stashing the scrapings on the side, to be used in mixing other colors. Many painters call this their "mud". Kevin even suggests buying empty tubes and filling them with your mud, rather than discarding it at the end of a painting session...another great recycling idea.
Kevin notes that the mud will necessarily be in harmony with your primary colors, since they are mixtures of the colors on your palette. I'm not sure whether that theory of color harmony would hold true with Torrit Grey, but I plan to experiment and find out. Here is a painting into which I incorporated some Torrit Grey. Stay tuned for more!
Because the combination of pigments cleaned out of the filters is never the same from year to year, the color Torrit Grey is never the same either. Recently, Gamblin has started labeling the tubes of Torrit Grey with the year of manufacture. So now we painters can collect tubes from various "vintage years", if you will, just like we would collect wines from different vintage years. It's a limited edition pigment!
Not only is Gamblin's approach very earth-friendly, it has the added lure of the mysterious: You never know what the next batch will be like until you open it. I am loving the 2013 batch---a beautiful dark grey, it makes a lovely soft grey when mixed with white. It almost has a slight violet cast...see photo below.
Torrit Grey is also great mixed with other colors. In his book "Landscape Painting Inside & Out", Kevin Macpherson advocates for scraping your palette as you work, and stashing the scrapings on the side, to be used in mixing other colors. Many painters call this their "mud". Kevin even suggests buying empty tubes and filling them with your mud, rather than discarding it at the end of a painting session...another great recycling idea.
Kevin notes that the mud will necessarily be in harmony with your primary colors, since they are mixtures of the colors on your palette. I'm not sure whether that theory of color harmony would hold true with Torrit Grey, but I plan to experiment and find out. Here is a painting into which I incorporated some Torrit Grey. Stay tuned for more!
"Edouard's Bouquet"
16 x 20
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