Grays and Neutrals

 "More paintings fail from too much intense color than from too much gray." (James Gurney, Color and Light)

 Grays allow colors to be more vibrant. Gurney later talks about the "fruit salad" problem of too many colors, where using just one or two colors with complementary grays can make color "sing".

(Nicole Pletts, The Dull and The Drab)

(Jan Havicksz Steen, The Parrot Cage, 1660 - 1670)

(James Gurney, Humboldt on the Orinoco, 1985)