Have you ever finished a painting only for it to look dull, desaturated, and muddy?
This is one of the biggest challenges that every beginner faces with watercolor mixing.
If you’re frustrated and wondering where you’re going wrong, it’s because you need to know what causes muddy colors and how to avoid them.
That’s exactly what I’m about to discuss.
Let’s get into it…
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What causes muddy paintings?
Muddying is when your watercolor painting no longer has the transparency and “glowing effect” that most paintings have. Instead, your paintings come out looking unintentionally dull and brown.
The biggest causes of muddy paintings can be divided into three categories:
1. Misunderstanding watercolor behavior
It’s so important to understand how watercolor behaves so that you can work with the paint. Here are some signs you need to understand watercolor behavior better:
- Reactivating previous layers
- Painting from dark to light
- Overworking and scrubbing the paper while it is drying
Watercolor painting is all about moisture levels and timing. When you rewet previous layers to try fix them or go back and forth over damp paint, this causes your painting to turn muddy.
In watercolor, you always paint from light to dark. Once you paint the dark layers, you can’t paint lighter ones on top. If you do this will cause the colors to neutralize and dull.
2. Color mixing
Some of the color mixing mistakes that cause muddy colors include:
- Using colors with too many pigments in them.
- Layering or mixing complementary colors without realising.
Every time you mix three primaries or complementary colors, you are neutralizing them to create a brown, grey, or black color.
You can unknowingly mix these colors if you layer them on top of each other or use premixed paints with more than three pigments.
3. Contaminated/bad quality supplies
Sometimes your supplies, or how you use them, are the problem:
- Using low quality paper
- Using dirty paint water
- Not cleaning the mixing palette properly
- Using chalky, cheap watercolors.
Believe it or not, using bad quality paint or paper can be part of the cause of muddy, dull paintings.
Low-quality watercolor paper is terrible at absorbing moisture evenly. This means the paint will distribute and dry unevenly.
As a result, it’s easier to create unwanted backruns, overwork, and muddy your colors.
It’s also important to rinse your brush, clean your palette, and use clean paint water.
10 Ways to Avoid Muddy Colors in Watercolor
Now that you know what muddy colors are and what causes them, let’s look at how you can avoid them.
Learn all bout color mixing
Essentially, muddy colors occur when you unintentionally mix a brown, gray, or neutral color.
Understanding the basics of color theory allows you to learn about the relationships between different colors. It is one of the most important topics you can use to improve your color-mixing skills.
I have already written an in-depth guide to mastering watercolor mixing for beginners if you want to learn more!
Clean your brushes after you finish
Never let your brushes dry without being rinsed thoroughly with clean water. Otherwise, when you re-wet them to start a fresh painting, the dried pigment will reactivate and mix to create muddy colors.
Use fewer pigments
Working with fewer pigments allows you to produce clean color mixes. Some paints have more than 3 or 4 pigments. If you mix two or three colors that each have 3 pigments, you’ll be creating a new color with 9 pigments! This could be the reason why your colors appear muddy.
Use 2 Jars of Water
To avoid muddy colors, use 2 jars of water between washes.
Use the first jar to remove paint from your brush and the second to load it with clean water. Always be sure to be thorough and rinse your brush in both jars when switching colors.
This way the leftover pigment won’t get mixed into the new colors.
Avoid black and white
Try to avoid using black and white paint to lighten or darken a color mixture. White watercolor tends to be opaque and chalky, which you’ll want to avoid.
Instead of adding white, dilute the color or use a lighter shade altogether. The same goes for darker colors; use a more concentrated mixture or use darker colors when mixing.
Avoid using opaque colors
When you use opaque paints to mix new colors, they can produce muddy and chalky results. This is because opaque pigments are thicker and are easily muddied. This doesn’t mean you should never use them.
You just have to be careful and intentional when using them. It can help to test them out by mixing them with different colors to see what happens.
Clean your palette
Always clean your palette before starting a new painting. Sometimes leftover pigment can muddy your color mixtures and ruin the results of your painting.
Avoid unintentionally mixing complementaries
Complementary colors are positioned on opposite sides of the color wheel. When you mix complementary colors, you produce neutral colors (gray, brown, and black). It can help if you practice gradually neutralizing colors using their complementary.
Simply choose any color and add small amounts of its complementary color until you neutralize it and create a new shade of gray, brown, and black. This exercise helps you become aware of how much paint to add to your mixes. You’ll be able to mute colors without letting them turn completely muddy.
The diagram below shows how mixing red and green creates a neutral color:
Use color mixing charts
Color mixing charts allow you to familiarize yourself with the colors on your palette. Especially when you’re new to color theory and mixing watercolors. The more you familiarize yourself with different colors and how they perform when mixed together, the easier it will be for you to choose the right mixes thus avoiding muddy colors.
Color mixing charts also help you learn more about how different pigments behave when mixed together. This is important because if you are aware
Check out my article on different types of color mixing charts to learn more.
Let the paint dry
If you’re painting in layers, make sure each layer is completely dry before adding the next one. If you add a new layer while the previous one is wet, the colors could mix on the paper, neutralize, and turn muddy.
Use good quality paper
Sometimes cheap watercolor paper has a greyish undertone compared to good quality cotton paper. This grayish undertone will affect how your painting turns out because watercolors are transparent.
Additionally, cotton paper absorbs and holds water evenly; this means it’s easier to control the paint. The paper stays moist for longer, so you’re not running out of time and it’s harder to create backruns.
Importance of watercolor mixing knowledge
Most of the time the biggest cause of mixing muddy colors is not knowing the basics of color mixing and practicing with your set of paints. I would recommend the following articles to help you learn more!