Dominant Color: Creating Unity and Mood in Watercolor
Updated: Sep 23
Have you ever looked at a painting and felt something before you could even explain why?
The paintings I’m most drawn to seem to communicate an emotion or story almost immediately. Often, part of their strength comes from what the artist has chosen to leave out. Instead of allowing every color, detail, and shape to compete for attention, the artist makes decisions about what matters most.
The word decide comes from a Latin root meaning “to cut off.” I like that idea when thinking about painting. Sometimes creating a stronger painting is less about adding more and more about deciding what can be simplified so the important things have room to speak.
One way we can do that is through dominant color.
A dominant color does not mean that a painting contains only one color. It simply means that one color or color family has the strongest presence and helps unify the painting. The other colors can still be there, but they play supporting roles. That dominant color can have a powerful influence on the mood, atmosphere, and message of the finished work.
The studies above were part of the process I used to work out the design and color for my watercolor Token of Honor.
I’ve learned a great deal by studying painters I admire and paying attention to how they organize color. One artist whose work has influenced me is Stephen Scott Young. I’ve always admired the way he uses a restrained, dominant color scheme to create harmony and atmosphere in his paintings.
Looking at other artists this way can be a great exercise. Instead of only asking, “What colors did they use?” try asking, “Which color is carrying the painting?”
While I was developing Token of Honor, I became especially interested in the color harmony of one of Stephen Scott Young’s paintings. I loved the beautiful cool blues in his work, and I experimented with a similar color direction in one of my early studies.
The problem was that those colors were expressing his painting—not necessarily the story I wanted to tell.
When I brought the study into my teacher Chris DiDomizio’s studio, several artists commented that the color made the scene feel more like the Caribbean. They were right. I had chosen a dominant color, but I hadn’t chosen the one that best supported my particular subject and memory.
That was an important lesson for me.
The goal isn’t simply to choose a beautiful color scheme. The color needs to serve the painting. I wanted this piece to carry something of the heat, earth, light, and warmth I remembered from my travels in southern Africa, while also expressing the child’s strength and innocence.
Once I became clearer about what I wanted the painting to say, the color decisions became
much easier.
For the final painting, I shifted toward warm oranges, earth tones, and touches of complementary color. Those warmer colors felt much closer to the atmosphere and emotional quality I wanted to communicate.
The dominant color became a way of tying the entire painting together—not only visually, but emotionally.
Want to see the watercolor materials I use in my own painting?
My free Watercolor Guide covers brushes, paper, paints, palettes, and other supplies, with a few additional tips on color and technique.
Since then, I’ve tried to think about dominant color much earlier in the painting process.
Before beginning, it can help to ask yourself:
What do I want this painting to feel like? Which color family best supports that feeling? Which colors need to stay quiet so the dominant color can do its job?
Try looking through some of your favorite paintings and identifying the dominant color in each one. You may be surprised by how limited the overall color structure actually is, even in paintings that appear very colorful.
Learning to recognize dominant color in other artists’ work can make it much easier to use the idea intentionally in your own paintings.
If you’d like to explore color, light, composition, and other watercolor principles with me in more depth, I’d love to have you join me at Illuminating Watercolor.
We paint together step by step, study the decisions that make a painting work, and continue developing both technique and artistic expression.
