nathanaardvark

Tutorial 36 - Color Harmony Basics

Added 2016-02-06 11:29:08 +0000 UTC

Color harmony is one of the main areas of color theory, so we should try to get our heads around it a little.

The basic idea is that complicated color mixes will overstimulate the eye and provoke unharmonious, uneasy feelings in the viewer. On the other hand, if we use color in a vary basic way and limit the palette to just one color, then we'll usually fail to keep our viewer's interest.

Music is a great metaphor to use when thinking about color. If all the keys are played at once it's chaos and one key repeating over and over again, is at best a boring march.

We can find a harmonious place if we learn what colors work well together. Here I've given three examples of harmonious color combinations.

There are many more combinations out there and when properly composed will take an image to a master level.

But keep in mind, color can not help a painting that doesn't have a strong value base. Values trump colors.

There's a lot more color theory for us to explore. More color stuff coming up.