Now is the time to gather up your paints and explore the potential of complementary colors. This is when I say, “Wait, there is much more to discover! You have only just tapped the tip of the iceberg.” The application of this color mixing skill needs further exploration. Unfortunately, the art instructor usually ends the discussion about mixing color opposites and moves onto another color concept, again, because complementary colors are easy to understand. In art classes or workshops we are typically directed to take these three pairs of color opposites, mix them and paint a swatch of the results. In other words, when we combine a pair of complementary colors on our palette, the original or parent colors lose their intensity or chroma. One of the rules we learn as painters is that color opposites cancel each other out when mixed. In a 6-hue color wheel, they can be found opposite from one another as seen below. However, it is also complex with profound consequences. I believe it is because the concept is something we learned so early on in our lives AND because the rule of complements is seemingly simple. I am not sure why this is, though I will speculate. In my years of teaching color, I have discovered that there is a tendency for artists to gloss over the important concept of complementary colors. It resides in understanding complementary colors, also referred to as color opposites, and the role they play in mixing color. The making of mud starts with one of the first concepts of color theory you learned early in school. Would you like to be rid of mud in your work? Would you like to know how you created it in the first place? Let me explain. It can even cause us to doubt our abilities.
Frustration when mixing color hinders our creative process.
Muddy paintings can be the bane of our existence. Our reaction is usually one of frustration or exasperation followed by, “How did that happen?” Or “Where did that come from?” You had no intention of creating this hue, yet there it is and it detracts from the rest of the painting. It’s that area in the painting where the colors suddenly become very unpleasant reminding us of dishwater or playing outside in the rain. We have all experienced it in our paintings. Every painter knows what ‘mud’ is and we don’t like it.