In the following video “Use Neutral Colors to Make Your Paintings More Interesting,” artist Angela Fehr demonstrates how to create a wide variety of neutral tones using vivid colors from a watercolor palette.

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She shows that you don’t need many brown paints because mixing burnt umber with cobalt blue can create a beautiful gray. Angela emphasizes the importance of complementary colors for making neutrals, using orange and blue, sap green and perylene scarlet, and yellow and violet to create different shades of neutrals, from grays to beiges and even rich darks resembling black.

These techniques produce interesting browns, grays, and other neutral tones, enhancing paintings with rich, complex colors beyond pure black or single-brown paints. Angela’s method involves adjusting complementary colors to get the right shade, promoting experimentation and color mixing exploration to enhance your watercolor art with depth and interest.

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