Mud

“Mud” is something a lot of artists talk about … usually negatively, as in, “don’t be a mud mixer”, or something similar. But what is mud? I’d like to share my thoughts on this from the perspective of oil painting. I believe the issue may be similar in terms of results with water color / gouache, and even acrylic, but I have no experience with those mediums. I will also restrict my opinions to direct painting, or “wet-on-wet” as indirect painting usually involves layers of transparent colors on top of each other. The “mud” issue for indirect is likely similar to some degree though.

So, what is mud mixing? There are usually three common ways people describe this. The first is in terms of temperature relationships. I’ve heard (and read) artists claim that warm shadows need cool highlights and warm highlights need cool shadows or you wind up with mud. I think this is a strange definition though. If the quality of light in the shadows is warm, and the quality of light in the highlights is warm, and your goal is to faithfully reproduce that in your painting, than changing color temperature isn’t probably going to be very satisfying. If this is “mud”, then so be it. However, if you choose stylistically to always use temperature contrast between light and shadow regardless of what you see in life (or in a reference photo), then that’s fine because it’s your choice. That doesn’t mean anybody else should follow that like a rule though just to avoid “mud”.

The second is having desaturated color, usually because of mixing complements together. It seems like a contemporary ideal to try and use the most saturated colors you can and anything that knocks the saturation down is mud. Again, if that’s a stylistic choice, fine. But if you want to faithfully match the colors you see, most of the organic world is pretty desaturated. If that’s mud, so be it.

The third is overworking your painting. This is probably most directly related to wet-on-wet because you are working new paint into existing paint on your surface. I’d imagine this can be done indirectly as well, but I have no experience with that. Overworking your paint, even on only a part of the picture plane, can definitely make it look “flatter” than just putting paint down and leaving it. Again, it depends on what you set out to achieve but the word “overworking” seems to connote that you’re working it more than you wanted.

Which brings me to my conclusion on mud. I would say that if you intend to keep your colors saturated and they get desaturated during mixing, that’s a bad thing. If you intend to have contrasting temperature between light and shadow but you wind up with consistent temperature, that’s a bad thing. And if you want your brush strokes to look like you made them perfect the first time and left them alone but you wind up obliterating the nuance by overworking, that’s bad. Otherwise, if you achieve what you set out to — even if that means you fit into one of these “mud” definitions — then you’ve succeeded and it’s good.

The key here is intent. There’s a quote that I’ve heard attributed to Pablo Picasso. I have no idea if he said it or in what language, and I’m paraphrasing anyway, but the quote is “if you make a mark by mistake, even if you love it, wipe it off.” That’s pretty severe but it speaks to intent being key in creating authentic art. If you achieve your intent, who cares if somebody else thinks it’s mud?

Anyway, I’m still going to keep painting.