Use Colour to tell the Story in your Painting - Muted vs Vibrant Watercolour
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. That means if you buy something we may possibly get a small commission at no extra cost to you.
You often hear people bemoaning the appearance of muted or ‘muddy’ colours in their paintings. In general, we all want clean vibrant colours. Muddy colour is the affectionate name given to muted (dull or grey) colour.
When you were hoping for clean vibrant colours, muddy or muted ones can be disappointing.
But these muted tones are not poor cousins of the vibrant ones - far from it. They have a beauty all of their own and can be used quite effectively to tell a part of the story in your watercolour painting.
Finding the beauty in Desaturated or Muted Palettes
I’m all for vibrant saturated colour most of the time - that is my personal happy place. But that is not say that desaturated or muted colour palettes don’t have their place. Far from it.
Apart from kids cartoons - saturated colours are not usually called for if you are leaning towards realism in any way.
If you have ever felt frustrated when trying to paint grass and foliage with a green that is vaguely natural looking you will know exactly what I mean. Greens seem to mostly come out of the tube/pan in a lurid plastic lawn/cartoon tree colour. Don’t worry… we’ll get to how to fix that in a minute - I’ll explain how you can mute, or desaturate your tube green in a minute.
Watercolour painters easily achieve natural variation in colour when the paint is dilute, the white paper shows through and the pigments shift, separate or granulate.
Such is the joy of watercolour!
All this texture adds so much interest and brings us a little closer to the way our eyes see subjects in reality. Light bounces off varied surfaces in real life and creates the diversity we seek to bring back into our paintings, in our own unique way of course.
If you have a palette comprised entirely of vibrant colours the result will be happy and bright like a kids cartoon.
Vibrant, saturated colour palettes give the image a bright and happy feel .
While this vibrant palette is wildly exciting, nothing stands out. Vibrant colour but it isn’t all that big of a deal if it is common to every part of the image.
Similarly, if you create that same image using only muted colours you have a calm and somewhat subdued image with nothing in particular catching your eye.
Muted, desaturated palettes give a calm, subdued tone.
But use a combination of both muted and saturated colour and those saturated colours will sing. Our eyes appreciate contrast. Colour saturation is one way to direct the viewer’s attention.
A careful selection of both vibrant and muted colours can tell a story and direct the viewer’s attention.
Want to put this into practice in a watercolour painting of your own?
There’s a perfect lesson on this in the 👨👩👧 Watercolour Tutorial Figures Bundle 👨👩👧 which is currently open for enrolment till the end of February 2024
What is a muted or desaturated colour?
Well first let’s describe a saturated colour. This is the colour (hue) in its purest form. It is bright and bold, and has not been dulled by the addition of any other colour.
Compare this to the sort of ‘palette mud’ colour that you get when you mix up all the leftover colour in your palette after a painting session. You know what I mean, it is usually some sort of greyish brown colour.
Also recall the advice to keep your water clean to avoid muddy colour? In both these cases, the ‘mud’ colour arises from mixing warm and cool colours together.
Clean vibrant colour is a joy of course. It is only if that was your goal that finding palette mud dulling your painting is disappointing. Used intentionally, palette mud is actually rather special.
Is saturation the same as value?
No - saturation and value are different. A saturated colour is one that is in its fullest purest strength. Value refers to how dark or light something is. A fully saturated yellow is still probably quite light relative to the colours around it (unless they are white of course). White is the highest value (lightest) and black is the lowest value (darkest).
So when we talk of a desaturated colour we are not meaning that it is pale, we mean that it is greyed, dull or muted. A desaturated colour can be light or dark.
How to mix a muted tone
Most of the time I don’t mix colour for watercolour. Well, not in a palette. I prefer to let the colour mix on the page either wet on wet or mix optically by glazing one transparent colour over another.
You can’t mix a saturated colour.
Those only come out of the tube. Desaturation is a destructive process. Starting with a saturated colour you can add a grey or a complementary colour to achieve a muted version of the colour. It’s not possible to go the other way and create a saturated version from a muted tone.
A colour wheel will tell you which colours neutralise each other. The complementary colour (neutralising colour) is directly opposite on the colour wheel.
To make a vibrant green a little more natural looking, neutralise it with the colour directly opposite on the colour wheel - red. A little goes a long way.
Get the proportions the other way around and you have a muted red instead of a muted green. With even proportions of red and green you will find something approaching a neutral grey.
Experiment with different versions of red and green in your palette and see what interesting muted shades you can come up with.
Similarly, orange and blue neutralise each other, as do yellow and purple.
If you want to find out more about these complementary colour pairs this is the article tells you how to improve your paintings using this colour theory.
Should you buy premixed neutral watercolours?
You will find lots of different premixed neutrals these days. Some of my favourites are:
These are delightful as personally, I don’t really enjoy colour mixing. For me it interrupts the flow of my quick happy painting.
But don’t ever feel like you are missing out if you have to mix up a neutral. Often the ones you mix yourself are far more nuanced and interesting. They can also be a more harmonious fit with your painting if you use colours that are already in your image to mix up a neutral.
My favourite grey mix is Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue, for example - perfect for the shadows in clouds. My advice is just to mix up a big puddle of it before you start painting if you think you are going to need it.
Muted colours have a different feel to them. They can create a calm or sombre mood to a painting depending on the context. If this is intriguing you, I think you will enjoy this post, which talks more about creating mood in your painting with colour and other techniques.
When muted colours are used as part of the overall palette they bring a balance to the piece.
Our eyes need little resting spots which they find in the neutral colours. Those neutral resting places really make the vibrant saturated colours pop. Variety and contrast is the key.
So go forth and identify the many delightful shades of grey hiding in your current palette.
And if you would like me to guide you through creating a painting using muted colours with just a pop of vibrancy, the perfect project for you is included in this value bundle currently available until the end of February 2024.
Join the Watercolour Tutorial Figures Bundle now while enrolment is still open!
Are you on your own painting journey?
One of these might be useful…