#Harmony in art examples how to

That is a big reason why there is good color harmony in the paintings. In all of the paintings shown in this article you will notice there are a fair amount of muted colors. Using Muted and Saturated Colors in Harmony These surprising, but also harmonious colors elevate the painting tremendously. Though the green color stands out, he mixed it into a shade that fits in with the painting. However, he also gave us some unexpected surprising colors, such as the green. Here, Edgar Degas did use the strategy of mixing up many similar colors. He arranges the colors in such a way so that they flow really well together.Īs stated earlier, you can achieve color harmony by just using different shades of the same color. The painting below by Edgar Degas titled “Four Dancers” beautifully combines cool and warm colors together.

#Harmony in art examples how to

Let’s take a look at some paintings to see what color harmony looks like in application – so you can learn how to apply these lessons to your own work. Creating good color harmony has a lot to do with paying attention to color relationships.Įxamples of harmonious colors in Painting This is happening because the colors don’t have as close a relationship as they did in the previous order they were in. Instead of them flowing well they appear to be jumping all over the place as they clash with one another. We can see that the order of colors really matters. Now, we will rearrange the color squares in a different order – cadmium red, black, yellow, purple, orange, ultramarine blue, and burnt sienna. There is a relationship between red and yellow as they are both warm in temperature – just as there is a relationship between yellow and orange and so on and so forth. The warm colors flow well into the more color hues. They are relatively pleasing to the eye! There is a certain kind of flow and harmony because of the order the colors are in. Look at the arrangement of colors in the above image. Once you have all of your squares, arrange them in the following order: cadmium red, cadmium yellow, orange, burnt sienna, black, ultramarine blue, and purple. Just use whatever you have – this will work for any medium! 🙂 How to arrange your color squares You can do the exercise along with me by creating the same squares. I then painted each square with the appropriate color – cadmium yellow, cadmium red, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, black, orange, and purple. Color square exercise setupįor this exercise I cut up 3 inch squares of regular drawing paper. Next, let’s take a look at some color squares to understand color harmony better.

We always need to take into consideration the colors that surround a particular color.

These images are a prime example, of how colors can look different depending on what color they are placed next to.