FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How do you prevent colors from getting 'muddy'?
When you paint from observation, and you carefully observe the colors you see,
and stick to that in your painting, the colors in the painting will never look
'muddy'. (with color i mean hue value and saturation). So colors themselves are
never 'muddy'. They only look muddy when they don't fit in a scene, for
instance if the color you paint is not possible in the given lighting. Richard
Schmid states as a rule: paint Warm light/cool shadows, Cool light/warm shadows
to avoid the colors from looking 'muddy'. But I can't say that I've observed this
to be such a strict rule. Anyway.. if your colors look muddy: try to hit the
colors in your subjet more accurately. Compare colors in your painting to the
subject and try to answer the questions : does the color in the subject look
redder/bluer/ yellower / darker / lighter / more or less saturated etc than in
my painting, and change if necessary.. Then at some point the painting won't
look muddy anymore..
One effect that some people use the word 'muddy' for is that in mixing
different colors of equal saturation, the saturation of the mixture always
decreases. So a beginning painter in trying to find a right mixture of colors,
adds more and more different colors in searching, and ends up with a brownish
'muddy' color (brown is actually yellow or red with low saturation). The way
out of this is: practise mixing ie: try to mix a paint matching a given patch
of color. A good book on color mixing also helps (eg. Helen van Wyck or Betty Edwards.)
In my experience the effect is stronger in low-pigmented student quality paints.
I feel that I have less difficulty in mixing the color I want using high
quality paints like Old Holland. This paint is more expensive, but you don't need
the most expensive pigments. Most colors also come in a cheaper A-series alternative.
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