WATERCOLOUR
Vie en gris – I must be careful not to start gushing. The fact is I adore grey. It’s a colour of many colours: the colour of weather, of clouds and the colour of water. I love to work with greys as a test bed for colour experiments, for in mixing it, its true qualities can be hidden, mysterious. Someone (maybe Sickert?) quoted that ‘a drop of alizarin in a sea of grey is the finest colour combination’. I can believe it! Actually, it depends on the greys as we shall see in this article.
Many artists have been attracted to a grey palette, more often in oils than watercolours. Turner experimented in both media. The aforementioned Sickert worked a lot from photographs, including from the press. He was also an etcher so was well used to handling greys, using them to harmonise his more colourful images. He was also aware of the work of Whistler who experimented extensively with greys. Whistler’s best-known image of his mother was labelled by him as ‘An arrangement in
