How to control the saturatio level of colours?

[Coyotebreaks]

Hi,

Just wondering is there a way to make a colour less saturated, without changing how light it is? I find allot of colours in paintranges are nice and all but are a bit too striking and instense for my style, i prefer more muted/subtle colours.

So i'm wondering if there is a way to tone them down?

Cheers for any input.

 

[TomasP]

mixing it with greys might help

 

[Garshnak]

You can mix them with greys, browns of equal luminance (you might have to mix your own and see how the combined luminance is affected, since it sometimes can end up darker than expected) or their complementaries (though this will darken your colour as well, it can lead to some interesting muted colours).

 

[airhead]

A little dab of their color wheel opposite will tone them down.

Yellow gets a bit of purple, green gets a bit of red, etc.

 

[freakinacage]

Also, highlighting with white and shading with black bleaches them out

 

[Einion]

Just wondering is there a way to make a colour less saturated, without changing how light it is?

The primary method bearing the highlighted bit in mind is using greys (ideally neutral greys, but this isn't vital) of the same value as the colour you're mixing with.

Greys and mixing complements are the two main methods for lowering chroma generally, and while with a mixing complement you do also get a drop in value you just compensate for this by adding as much white as necessary.

A little dab of their color wheel opposite will tone them down.

Yellow gets a bit of purple, green gets a bit of red, etc.

This is the theory, it's a bit more complex in practice regrettably. Even two colours that are diametrically opposites in hue (on a full colour wheel) don't always work as mixing complements; the best example is yellow, which faces violet-blue, and any two of these obviously will always mix green.

What this means in practice is that many mixing complements aren't opposite in hue and as well as this sometimes a single colour will work well with more than one other paint, earths + blues being the ideal example here.

Einion

 

[Coyotebreaks]

Hi,

thanks for help everyone. Just what I was looking for. I had a go mixing greys in and it seemed to work. I have previsouly tried using the oposing colour in the wheel to try to darken a colour, didn't think to try to lower saturation that way, will this at some to. Trouble is with some pre-mixed colours its hard to know what to use as the opposite colour, when I can find one though its cool.

Cheers

 

[Einion]

I have previsouly tried using the oposing colour in the wheel to try to darken a colour, didn't think to try to lower saturation that way, will this at some to. Trouble is with some pre-mixed colours its hard to know what to use as the opposite colour, when I can find one though its cool.

Yep that's one of the key things if you're relying on mixing complements, using any paints actually. Other than the problem of being able to identify what the original hue of any colour is, so you're sure what its opposite is, opposing hue doesn't guarantee two paints will work as mixing complements as I mention above.

But unless your colour requirements are very precise it is okay if you're using something that's not quite perfect - artists do this literally all the time - and if you get any unwanted colour shifts in the mixture they are easily compensated for.

One thing I would add about using greys to neutralise, I can guarantee that it works really well but it can be hard to control so if you run into trouble don't think the method is at fault, this is one of those things you have to work at.

Also, have to be careful about using them with yellows and oranges, as you can tend to get dull greens (even if you were using true neutral greys this can happen). But overall greys will give the most predictable results though, requiring the least tweaking.

Einion