When we hear the word harmony, we may think about music and a particular song sung by a harmonious voice. This harmonic sound is pleasing to the ear and we can enjoy the feeling that it gives us. This is a pleasing arrangement of the elements or parts of the whole. All the notes and the pitch seem to work together to create a pleasing order. Art is the same. In the painting on the left, the Dutch Master, Johannes Vermeer was a master at creating a harmonious blend of all the elements within a painting.

Creating harmony for pleasure - creating pleasing compositions...

You may ask why and how does the artist need to create harmony? There are several reasons for using this as an artistic design tool. First, it is used as a way for the artist to control the visual experience. To give pleasure to the viewer.

Harmony can be used to say and do many things. It can be used to create a unified and quiet composition or as a way to be bold. It can be used in such a way that it is interesting, or jarring. It can be used to stimulate and provoke.

But it is mostly used to create pleasure at some level and to speak to our appreciation of color, light and texture, line, movement, balance, etc.

Harmony can create boredom if there is not enough contrast between the compositional elements or colors to stimulate the viewer's interest. The artist can over- harmonize, that is, all the colors in the painting appear flat or uninteresting. Imagine a dull grey day, the same thing can happen to a palette of colors if they are too dull and lifeless.

However, sometimes the simple beauty of a monotone composition can offer interest through texture or line.

A simple reflection can offer great pleasure. Artists learn that everything to do with art is personal and relative to what the artist's statement is. Creativity comes into play, when the artist is able to visualize a simple composition as a more complex one. The viewer either makes a connection with the composition or not, and at times the connection may be different from the original intention. What else could you add to this simple birdbath to make it more interesting? What about a ripple?

When all the elements work in harmony, we get a feeling that there is order to the composition. In the image at left, the analogous colors work in harmony creating a unified image. But there is another component that can create harmony. Could it be line? The strong vertical lines of the vines create harmony with and against the line of the horizon. Again contrast is created between the horizontal and the vertical. This equals balance. Which in turn leads to harmony.

The colors of this image relate to each other. The cool tones, teamed with the mist coming off the river create a 'moody' composition.

The lines of the bridge; the arches, the diagonals and strong verticals balance the horizontal planes creating a unified and balanced composition.

Artists like us who wish to follow the traditional concepts of art, will learn to interpret the 'rules' and utilize them to suit our own artistic needs in the traditional sense.

Imagine listening to a very bad selection of music where your brain is bombarded by what you perceive as noise? The same applies to harmony in art as in music. For the artist, the degree of harmony is a personal decision or choice and each viewer will reacts in a different way to a composition.

Look at the color relationships between the images and the color swatches below...

The colors of this brightly colored flower below are in harmony with each other. Mother Nature knows what she's doing.

All the colors that make up this particular flower all share one common hue, yellow.

The colors range from yellow to red orange which is part of an analogous color relationship on the artist's color wheel.

In this landscape example the colors of the photograph are very harmonious - why do you think so?

Can you detect a color relationship between all these colors? They appear quite 'toned' or muted, and are what artists refer to as tertiary colors. These colors sit inside the pigment wheel nearer to grey.

A pleasing composition gives the viewer an opportunity to view another world.

The mood is conveyed and the atmosphere is established through the play of color. The artist has been able to offer the senses a pleasurable experience when colors work together in harmony.

Nature has its own way to establish color relationships and harmony, it does so with light and atmosphere. Because these colors appear to be reduced in intensity, the artist when painting for this effect, would have to do something to the colors on the palette to make them work in a harmonious way.

If the artist was to paint this particular scene, they may choose to tone their palette with one of the earth pigments which is a tertiary color or with gray (black and white). The choice may be either or both.

Harmonize your colors with a compliment...

There are several ways to create harmony in color and using a common 'toner' is very popular. However which 'toner' the artist chooses is a personal decision. Using the complement of a color will generally will retain the original hue, and hue shifting can be avoided. It was important for the rose and the leaves to remain fresh rather than become dull and muddy. The choice of toner, in this case the complement, allowed the color to stay true yet remain soft and quiet.

In this painting, the artist first used a warm under-painting to establish basic harmony between the layers. Then in the developmental stage of the design, she uses a common 'toner'.

This was the compliment of the orange hue which was the dominant pigment used for the rose. This allows the leaves to remain on the cooler side of the green spectrum which contrasts beautifully with the warmth of the large rose.