2 Ways to Create Painting Harmony with Stan Kurth

Harmony is when your whole painting feels like it works together. The easiest way to get it is to work with a limited palette. But artist Stan Kurth (Ep.9) has two additional ways he gets unity in his work.

First, he glazes.

Glazing is where you take a color and thin it down either with water (in watercolor or acrylic) or a medium (acrylic). You then use this thinned down color to cover an area.

Kurth uses one glaze to cover large areas of his painting so that everything has just a touch of that color. This unifies all the colors because now they share something in common, the glaze.

The second way Kurth creates harmony in his work is through his use of neutrals.

But not just any neutrals. He’ll take his painting’s dominant colors and use them to create his neutrals.

For example, if a painting has a lot of ultramarine blue, he’ll use that blue (and its opposite, or complement) to create his neutrals. That way the blue is across the whole piece. Not just in the super saturated color of ultramarine blue.. but in the grays as well. This unifies the painting.

Put it to Practice:

If you’re having a unity problem, the easiest and most assured way to fix it is to use a limited palette and to mix your secondaries (orange, purple, green) and terciarias (red orange, red purple, etc).

Using a limited palette is the closest you get to a guarantee in painting. And part of its magic is that by using a limited palette, you begin building unity from the beginning.

Building grays from your dominant colors is also a great way to build a painting up with unity in mind. That can be as easy as mixing your grays instead of reaching for a tube of gray.

However, sometimes you’ll get to the end and realize there is still a unity issue. And that’s when you might consider a glaze.

Fair warning though: Glazes can be quite unpredictable and take a little practice. But they are another great tool for your kit.