"Paintings With Personality"

This is a beautiful spot in Bernardsville, NJ. I love and was inspired by the buildings and surroundings.

Honey can sometimes make the strangest clothing color choices, especially when we are going out. I imagine most wives (or husbands) have that particular problem. Some people just don’t have a color sense or realize the importance of color matching.

Painters know color as an important design element. They use it to get attention, set a mood, explain, and describe. Color Scheme refers to how colors relate to each other on the color wheel and how the artist organizes colors in a painting. Below, I have listed some color schemes and how they might be used by the painter. All of them require a dominant, a secondary and an accent color. The painter also needs to subdue any very bright colors with tints and shades.

1. Monochromatic Color Scheme - Contains only one color that varies in value and intensity. It is difficult to emphasize your focal areas when using this scheme, but it can be done by using different values (shades, tints and tones) of the chosen color. Cool monochromatic colors are very soothing and are often used to create a mood, while warm monochromatic colors can feel uncomfortable and cause the viewer to be anxious.
2. Analogous Color Scheme - Uses three or more colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. It is harmonious and more noticeable than the monochromatic scheme. Like the monochromatic scheme, it can be hard to get enough contrast but that can be resolved with tints, shades and tones. To keep from ruining the harmony in your work, avoid using both warm and cool colors. Also, gradually mix your colors to keep them from all looking the same.
3. Complementary Color Scheme – This scheme uses colors opposite each other on the color wheel. Placed next to each other they are dynamic and exciting. Mixed together they cancel each other out and become gray. This scheme has a lot of contrast and painters have to be careful to keep their work from becoming shrill. The artist can gray a warm color to put emphasis on its cool complement, but to subdue the warm color doesn’t work as well. The complementary color scheme works best when you really want something to stand out.
4. Analogous-Complementary Color Scheme: Uses four or five colors on the color wheel. As the name says, this color scheme is both analogous and complementary. The analogous colors are close and the complement serves as the contrasting color. Choose your dominant color and its complementary then one or two colors on either side of the complementary. It is easy to get mud with this color scheme especially if you use more than four colors. If you add too much of the complementary color when mixing the color will lose its intensity.
5. Near-Complementary Color Scheme: The artist chooses a color and almost directly across the color wheel from it, either right or left of the complement of that color is the near compliment. As long as you keep one of the colors dominant the near complements will enhance each other when placed side by side. The color gets less intense as the two colors mingle but unlike the complementary is still vibrant, and one doesn’t overwhelm the other as fast.
6. Split-Complementary Color Scheme: Is a variation of the complementary color scheme. It is made up of three colors - one color and the two colors on either side of its complement. The contrast in the split complementary is as forceful as in the complementary but the colors aren’t as tense. Stay away from grayed warm colors (browns and dull yellows) because they could ruin the scheme.

Honey’s clothing choices haven’t improved even after 48 years of marriage and I gave up long ago. After all, who says my choices are the best anyway?

I will finish with color schemes in my next post. If you have a comment about this post please leave it below.