To make a vivid, saturated color stand out more, place it against a field of low saturation, grayed colors. These low saturation colors will give life and excitement to the main color interest in your painting. This is one of the most important principles in color theory. In the painting of the boat, notice how the orange buoy stands out against the surrounding blue grays.

You can make grays in four main ways. The main approaches are: adding black and/or white (quick), mixing two complements (automatically gives you warm/cool color), buying a tube of gray and modifying it (unnecessary), using your leftover muds (can harmonize a painting). I use all of these methods with the exception of buying tube grays. Any complements will mix to make nice grays. For example, red and blue-green, yellow and purple-blue, purple and green-yellow, turquoise and orange, blue and yellow-orange.

In this course unit

Mastering the use of grays is the most important thing you will learn about in color theory. Without beautiful grays you cannot create beautiful color.

In this course you will learn:

• how to use a low saturation field to make your color interest more vibrant
• Godlove’s principle: which combinations of tints and shades look best together
• which value range is best for colorful grays
• four strategies for mixing grays
• four approaches for mixing browns
• how to mix dull versions of your primary colors
• why you should never throw away your leftover paint, and what to do with it
• how to use complementary contrast to further focus your color interest

Total number of assignments: 7

Total number of pages: 24