Color Harmony for Artists

One reason that choosing paints in an art store can be frustrating is due to the variety of names for every color. Take yellow for example Hansa Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Deep,Cadmium Lemon, Aureolin Yellow, Indian Yellow, Naples Yellow, and New Gamboge. How are all these yellows alike? How are they different?

The information in "Color Choices" by Stephen Quiller provides a way to understand color relationships. A detailed color wheel in the book called the "Quiller Wheel" provides a comprehensive roadmap for color. This can be of great help in creating harmonious color relationships, and achieving optimum color balance in your paintings.

This painting creates a beautiful dance between two complementary colors - yellow and violet. In Quiller terms this would be a good example of the Complementary Color scheme. More fine examples of the Complementary Color Scheme can be viewed in the book "Color Choices".

See more paintings by artist Ken McBride

There are deliberate choices of color in this painting. Orange/red and its complement blue, along with colors adjacent to blue on the color wheel. This would be a good example of the use of a Split Complementary color scheme in Quiller terms. Notice how the choice and placement of color creates the impression of the reflective surface of the water. More fine examples of the Split-Complementary Color Scheme can be viewed in the book "Color Choices".

See more paintings by this artist in the Charles Stuart Virtual Gallery

This book is full of practical and insightful information to improve your painting and sense of composition and color sense. It is tailored to the watercolorist primarily, however most of the ideas are relevant to all mediums.

Jeanne Dobie encourages artists to get to know as much as possible about pigments, their behavioral differences, their "personalities". This would include such things as warm-cool, opaque-transparent, staining-nonstaining and how they mix with each other. She suggests the use of pure color pigments that are as close to the raw state as possible. This will allow you to create the most beautiful and striking colors for your paintings. A term that Jeanne Dobie uses for pure color pigments is "octanic" color.

The interesting thing about primary colors is that there is no such thing as an absolute RED, BLUE, or YELLOW. Each leans slightly toward one side or the other side of its neighbor. So for example, Cadmium Red is on the yellow side of red, and Alizarin Crimson is slightly on blue side of red. Phthalo blue is slightly on the yellow side of blue and Ultramarine Blue leans toward the red side of blue.

So if you want to mix a vibrant violet from two primary colors, you will naturally use RED and BLUE. But which RED...and which BLUE? It is best to avoid colors that have any component of yellow in them - because yellow is the complement of violet and this will result in more dull or neutral color.

Because Phthalo blue and Cadmium Red both have a component of yellow, mixing them will not create a vibrant violet. I painted the shapes you see below with oil colors. As you see the result of this mixture is a nondescript neutral color.



Alizarin Crimson and French Ultramarine blue will combine to make a more pure and striking violet. According to Jeanne Dobie, this would be an octanic mixture.



See Jeanne Dobie's book "Making Color Sing" to learn more about mixing octanic colors.

Jeanne Dobbe emphasizes the importance of color placement on the canvas.

"Too often in an attempt to create liveliness, myriad bright colors are tossed together throughout a composition. The effect can be jarring, with no center of interest as far as color is concerned. It is not only the selection, but the placement of colors in your composition that is critical."



Notice the deliberate placement of red/orange at full intensity in this painting. There is no question at all about where the center of interest is.

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Jeanne Dobie stresses that dark should be a catalyst for lights rather than simply create a stark contrast. The secret is in the interaction of complements. Although there is stark contrast in this painting, it is very striking due to the way the complementary colors interact.

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Continue on to the next module to see more about how light can glow when placed with complementary darks.

Jeanne Dobie is very masterful at creating colors that glow or scintilate. How do you create a dynamic color in a painting that makes an impression on your viewer? Filling your canvas for example, with bold, bright colors will usually not create the effect of "singing" color. Neither will a stark light dark contrast. The secret is in the color relationships.

To make a color sing, you need to create a reaction with the colors surrounding it. In the following diagram I've done an experiment in watercolor after the same in Jeanne Dobie's book.

The light transparent yellow in the center of each of the squares is Aureolin Yellow.



The first square is a commercial Black straight from the tube. The next two squares are painted with Alizarin Crimson + Ultramarine Blue in varying proportions. The Muted Complement is painted with Alizarin Crimson + Ultramarine Blue + Aureolin Yellow.

So the question is which of these is most successful at making the yellow glow? To my eye, all three of the squares with complementary colors offer more interest and visual vibration than the first one where commercial black is used. The last square, where yellow surrounded by the Muted Complementary Dark is the most striking. The addition of Aureolin Yellow to the Complementary Dark both softens and lightens the color which seems to be most effective in allowing the yellow to shine. The yellow almost appears to flow or spill out of the box.

And these are just little boxes you are seeing on a computer screen! Imagine how fun it might be to have this kind of color reaction work for you in a painting!

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The orange yellow glow in this painting is assisted by the muted complementary violet tones of the pointe shoes.

See more paintings by artist Ann Radley

One of Jeanne Dobie suggestions is to try orchestrating a color in a painting so that it weaves rhythmically through space. It can disappear and reappear again in different variations - warm or cool, light or dark, changing in intensity as it travels. No two colors in nature are ever alike.

This painting by Laura Swink is a captivating weave of shape and color.

See more paintings by artist Laura Swink

Harold Speed was an English teacher and painter who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His book is rich with ideas for developing a sense of color and for handling oil paint. It has much to offer for both a beginning and an experienced oil painter.

Every time I look through this book I learn something new. These words from Harold Speed's book are posted on my studio wall.

It is good to let go of the idea that color is associated with specific objects. Yes grass is sometimes green and the sky is sometimes blue. But absolute identifiable coloring is seldom seen in nature. Rather the world is a moving, vibrating kalidescope of color. As Harold Speed said, there is movement, the play of several colors together often to be perceived in the quietest effects.

But the left brain habit of seeing, classifying and labeling objects can be very hard to break out of.

A book by Betty Edwards "Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain" is very helpful here. A good way to expand the way we see things is to shift from left brain mode into right brain mode. To learn more about how to make this shift, read the Betty Edwards section in my lens about drawing.. . . "Don't tell me you can't draw a straight line!"

To be able to observe the movement and vitality of color is a good step toward trying to capture this vitality on your canvas.

Another suggestion from Harold Speed is to throw your eyes out of focus which has the effect of letting in more color.

Harold Speed recommends doing an exercise in his book which involves painting 30 squares of oil color in different ways. The point of this is to help yourself get out of the box
in terms of ways to apply oil paint. I spent a fair amount of time on this exercise but it was well worth the time.
I began by drawing six rows of five squares each on a white canvas. Each row is devoted to a different color. Please note that the order varies within each color row in my example - (the order doesn't matter).


Each row has squares painted as follows:

1. Solid

2. Solid outlined with the same color but slightly higher intensity

3. Glaze of transparent color over dry white ground

4. Color painted lightly on a tacky white ground (a Pre-Raphaelite method)

5. Dabbing one color on another - without blending

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If you want to try this exercise, please refer to "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials" for more specific instructions.

Here are four squares from the yellow row (of the experiment above) enlarged. It is interesting to compare four different ways of handling paint and the different effects that are possible.

Harold Speed pointed out how color masses are modified by the treatment of their edges. So for example if you surround a shape with a higher intensity hue it will have a stronger effect.

Which of these two do you think is more forceful?

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Color is glazed over white with the two yellow squares shown below.

In the square on the left, the yellow is glazed thinly onto a dry white ground. The thickness of the yellow can be moderated to allow more or less white to show through.

The square on the right has an almost glassy quality about it. It is a method that the Pre-Raphaelite painters used.

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Here are a few details about the Pre-Raphaelite method of painting on to a wet white ground.

Thinly cover an area to be painted in white mixed with a little copal varnish. Let this dry for about 30 minutes until it becomes slightly tacky. Paint color very lightly onto the white, being careful not to let too much white come up on your brush. Wipe your brush after each stroke.

This can be used to create a rich translucent effect - almost similar to color in a stained glass window. It can also be used to vivify a dark area of your painting. As solidly painted darks can tend to become heavy and dull.

And as the effect can be seen in little squares on your computer screen, use your creative imagination to visualize how this might take shape in a painting.

See "Oil Painting Techniques and Materials" for a more detailed description of this technique.

I prepared the surface for this painting by painting yellow ochre, raw sienna, and a light cobalt blue here and there all over the canvas. The 'canvas' isn't canvas actually - it is a textured Belgian linen. Once the preliminary painting was dry, this color plus the rough texture of the linen provided an interesting surface to work on and lively color effects were created as the painting developed. This kind of surface seemed to work well for the subject - an energetic ballet dancer.



See more paintings by artist Ann Radley

The Parisian artists of the late 19th century were seen as revolutionaries in their time. They made a radical departure from the approach of building up a picture by a laborious study of the outlines of solid forms, shading etc. Rather, the visual picture is created by a direct response to color sensation. With this style of painting, short "broken" brush strokes are used of mixed and pure unmixed color, with little blending or shading.



This painting done in a similar style, by Laura Swink, is very successful at portraying the effect of scintillating color and light.

See more paintings by artist Laura Swink