The Art of Color Harmony: Understanding the Power of a Mother Color

If you’ve never heard of a mother color or how to use it, you’re going to want to read this and take notes. Well, you probably won’t need notes because it’s a simple, but very powerful technique. A mother color is simply a color that is mixed into every other color used in the painting, usually in VERY small amounts.

For example, let’s say you are painting a vase of red flowers. Red could be a good choice for the mother color. If the vase is sitting on a wooden table, you would add the tiniest dab of red to the brown tones, When adding the stems and leaves you would do the same and continue with other parts of the painting. The eyes will still read the greens as green, etc. but the painting will exhibit a peaceful harmony that wouldn’t be there otherwise.

Another application would be to tone your canvas with your chosen mother color. If you allow parts of the base color to peek through you can create some instant harmony. This is a method that I’m very interested in trying, especially with red. I need to reign in my urge to always feel like the entire canvas needs to be covered in paint. Yes, I am also a work in progress.

Honestly, I rarely use this technique 100% of the time, I just don’t always think about it. However, I do use it a lot. I often tone canvases with some combination of blues and yellows which means when I need greens in the painting, I will grab the blue and yellow used to tone the canvas. If I want olive greens I add a drop of a red that will be used somewhere else.

One final tip for choosing your mother color, picking a color straight from the tube is the easiest. If you run out while you are painting, you won’t need to stop and mix more, you just grab and go.

Hope you find this helpful in adding a little harmony into your art!