I've been working like crazy to prepare for my new color workshop on January 26th, Secrets of Color Harmony - Part I. I've taught workshops on color before, and I teach color in my Acrylic Painting classes, but in this workshop we'll be taking a slightly different approach.

So I've been painting new examples, and finding new examples, and creating new handouts – and  figuring out just how much I'll be able to pack into this day. Each participant will create their own book to take home and refer back to, to make this as practical and applicable as possible. The idea is that you go home with specific ways of creating color harmony in your paintings that you can put into immediate practice.

If you'd like to find out more, here's a link to my art workshops website with all the info.

Secrets of color harmony - #4

John Singer Sargent, "A Parisian Beggar Girl"

Tone the canvas before you paint

While the first three secrets I've written about in earlier blog posts work across the board, this — and most of each of the methods to follow — is not something you need to do to make things work. They, however, are great techniques to try, and they will help create color harmony.

John Singer Sargent, "A Street in Venice"

Underpainting the canvas with a solid color will pull together the colors in your painting. What color to choose? Here, John Singer Sargent has used a creamy almost-mid-tone for A Parisian Beggar Girl and a darker ground for A Street in Venice. Notice how he has used scumbling across the surface, allowing the ground color to show through. The creamy underpainting of A Parisian Beggar Girl provides a foil for the subtle lavender brush strokes above it, the eye mixing it into the rough neutral colors of an old wall.

You could also consider something that will contrast with what you will paint on top of it. You might want to choose complementary colors, or warm/cool contrasts. Many landscape painters, because of the predominance of greens in their paintings, choose some kind of red, magenta, or burnt sienna.

Charles W. Hawthorne, "Portrait of Henry Hensche"

Charles Hawthorne, in his Portrait of Henry Hensche, has used a stronger set of yellow–purple complementary colors, with a vivid pinkish-purple underpainting, visible at the bottom of the painting and peeking out from underneath other places, contrasting beautifully with the yellows and greens of Hensche's slicker and the surface of the water.

Charles W. Hawthorne, untitled portrait

In this untitled portrait, Hawthorne used a faintly visible yellow underpainting to contrast with the strong purples that dominate the painting and and pick up and create continuity with its yellow highlights. In each of these paintings, the color of the canvas, toned before painting, creates interest, continuity, and color harmony. Try it sometime!

Secrets of color harmony - #3

Mix your neutral colors

The grays and browns that you mix with your palette will ALWAYS be more interesting, and will work better in your painting, than grays and browns you get from the tube. That includes grays that you mix with white and black – a neutral gray that has its uses, but in a painting looks pretty sterile.

Why do the mixed neutral colors work better? They're a little more sophisticated, a little juicier, a little richer and more colorful. They can lean in different directions – you can have cool blue grays, green grays, purpley grays, or beiges, taupes, parchment colors – all created by starting with the same three colors. They give you lots of directions to lean in, which creates a wonderful and subtle variety of ways you can vary the colors in your painting.

And, to continue my family metaphor – they all have the same DNA – the same three colors that mixed to make them. That creates color harmony.

Secrets of color harmony - #2

Dirty water and dirty brushes

Some years ago, I was visiting the Open Studio (Santa Cruz Open Studios) of two Santa Cruz colorists. While I was there, someone asked one of the artists, what was her secret to good color? "Dirty brushes," was the answer. The second artist laughed and said, "Mine's dirty water!" (We are talking about acrylics here.)

There's a reason for this.... As you paint, using the same brushes and water, you'll get a little of each color into each other color, until — presto! They're all related. They share the same characteristics - they have the same DNA (to use a familial metaphor). And you get color harmony.

The moral of this tale is: use the same brushes and water — and don't think you need to "freshen" the water. I use the same water for days... honest! It works really well....

Secrets of color harmony - #1

Knights Valley Trees and Vineyards (untitled as of yet), about 8"x10"

© 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Start with a limited palette

The simplest way to create color harmony is to begin with a limited palette. How limited? All you need is one yellow, one red, one blue, and white.

With those colors, you'll be able to mix oranges, purples, greens, and most everything in between. How those mixes differ depend on which yellow, which red, which blue, and which white you choose.

Your three colors, with white, become like a family. Whatever you mix with them comes from them – as I'm fond of saying, all those mixes have the same DNA. They are related. Hence – color harmony.

Now, say you're painting the image of a tree, and instead of mixing your yellow and blue, you pull out a separate tube of green for its leaves. You'll find it doesn't fit in with its surroundings. It's not related. It doesn't have the same DNA as the colors around it.

When you've worked with your three colors for awhile, and know well what you can do with them, you will also learn what you can't do with them. Maybe your red and blue make a plummy brown instead of a vibrant purple. Maybe your blue and yellow don't give you the brilliant spring green you're looking for. Don't feel stuck – that's when it's time to add in a new color. (Only one color at a time works best, so you really get to know all of the new possibilities now open to you.)

Note: In the little painting above, I used primary magenta, primary cyan, a light yellow ( a mixing, or printer's, palette), and Titanium white.

Interview with painter Karen Appleton, I

Melt © Karen Appleton, reproduced by permission

Karen Appleton, whose artwork you can find online at karenappleton.blogspot.com, paints gift-wrapped presents, and the profusion of color and exuberance found in ribbons and bows. We conversed by email as I prepared to write about her work, and she shared what she loves about painting, how she approaches a painting, and how she approaches composition.

"I love everything about painting," she writes. "I love the smell of the oils, the feel of a big blob of paint as it smears on the canvas, I love sketching out ideas, mixing piles of gorgeous color – everything.

"But I am crazy about observation, especially observing color. I am fascinated with how our brains perceive and interpret color, especially as it wraps around form. I enjoy playing close attention to the variety of colors that actually make up what we perceive as only one. Seeing how this variety of color breaks apart into abstract shapes, or pieces like a puzzle, and how they fit together to form the object is beautiful to me, and I really enjoy playing this up in my paintings."

You can see how this comes into play in her painting Melt, above, and in a detail below, with its profusion of ribbons.

detail, Melt © Karen Appleton, reproduced by permission

"I also enjoy working from life – it is a very important part of my process. It requires me to slow down and focus all attention on observing an object in an environment that slightly changes throughout the day. So a painting becomes a selection of the most beautiful colors as they change from day to night, and day by day. I'm not capturing a moment in time, but many moments in time, which is exciting to me."

Here you can see how Karen Appleton arranges a still life setup, with the composition of a new painting drawn out in charcoal on the canvas beside it.

Asked about her approach to her subject matter, she wrote, " A painting always starts with an idea of feeling. Usually an idea is inspired by an experience – a jog in the snow, a crowded train, signs of spring, etc. I automatically think of these experiences in terms of color, shape, and texture. Snow might be a heavy white velvet ribbon, ice might be a shiny silver stick-on bow. With the ribbons and bows I recreate the visual experience, but I'm also attempting to describe how that visual experience felt."

Icicles © Karen Appleton, reproduced by permission

"I find that an object's shape or positioning in a composition can be very helpful in expressing a feeling. Any object can be expressive, but for me, ribbons can be shaped or arranged to reach up or out to the viewer; they can flop over, feel heavy, droop, bend, or bounce; they can pile on top of each other; they can almost touch, or completely intertwine together.

"I also adore the entire process of actually creating the image I'm going to paint. I chose the colors and shapes that will contribute to the feeling of the painting. It's almost like building a little stage, picking the actors, deciding costumes and lighting, and writing the script."