Jelonek

Here is my attempt to explain one of the aspects of how I think of colours and an explanation of why I accidentally started loving violets.

Different hues have different values. While pure, fully saturated yellows or cyans are naturally bright - violets, blues, or reds are darker. I used to think that brighter hues are "better ones" because you can have a saturated look with a small amount of tint.

But as saturated yellows stand out with their value against darker backgrounds - violets stand out with their saturation even when value is limited to darker tones - because they don't need black tint added. Meanwhile, yellows need that black as by themselves those are too bright.

So you can cover quite a wide range of values with violets without the need to use any black which makes them really amazing. While yellows show their colours only in bright values - the darker, the more muddy the colour.

That being said, it doesn't mean I use only saturated colours - in fact it's quite the opposite (feel free to colour-pick my works to see). It's all about that balance between neighbouring colours on the painting. In addition, often times decision about saturation is taken away by hue limitations when aiming to keep values consistent.

If you want to check your values in photoshop remember to not use desaturate (it most of all relies on the amount of black and doesn't show accurate values). Just put a completely white layer on top of all and set it to "color" blending mode.