The mother of all colours

How to create colour harmony by using a “mother color” in all mixes.

What is colour harmony?

Some paintings thrive on a heady mix of bright saturated colours placed alongside each other. Some colours will clash and others will shout at each other, and the overall effect can be one of colour chaos. Check out the wild paintings of the highly successful Scottish artist Scott Naismith to see what I mean. Somehow in the craziness he creates stunning pictures!

But often we want to paint something that is closer to reality, more muted in colour, and harmonious. This is where the idea of colour harmony comes in. Colour harmony can seem to be a tricky thing to pull off, but there are a couple of simple ways to achieve it.

1. Use a limited colour range (try painting with just one blue, one red, and one yellow – plus white if you paint in oils, gouache or acrylics). This will reduce the number of colours in the painting, and because any secondary or tertiary colours come from just these primaries, then every colour will be in harmony with any other colour.

2. Or use a mother colour. Use one common colour in every mix you make. In my painting at the top of this post I used cadmium red in every single colour mix. This gave an atmospheric feel to the picture (the mountain does glow red some mornings as the sun goes up and I tried to portray this by making every element include a touch of red from the dawning sky). Often you don’t need to add much of the mother colour to the mix, just a tiny touch will shift the colour in that direction. I also chose the mother colour (red) for the sky colour as this also brought harmony to the painting, so don’t be afraid to change things where necessary. Any colours you use should be there to make the painting work, not because they were there in reality!

This painting also has a mother colour of red which again unifies a whole range of other colours. Even the green has a touch of red in it. This effect is great for capturing atmosphere, especially that of the morning or evening light. (Grey days can use a touch of grey in every colour mix!)

I hope you found this helpful.

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