New Vintage Year: Torrit Grey

Those who follow such things know that every year around Earth Day, Gamblin Artists Colors releases a new batch

of Torrit Grey. I remember when I first discovered this phenomenon, I thought "What a great idea!"

The Gamblin paint manufacturing 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".

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. You can see some of my paint charts above, showing the different hues from the past several years.

Gamblin even sponsors a contest every year, with awards for the best paintings made using only Torrit Grey, black and white paint. It's amazing how beautiful these monochromatic paintings can be be. You can see the 2013 winners here.

You can't buy Torrit Grey---it is a promotional give-away with the purchase of a certain amount of Gamblin goods. The enticement was enough to make me stock up!