It is really important that we pay attention to color harmonies in our painting. Albert Munsell has given us a tool to do that called the Munsell Color Wheel.
The Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions: hue, value (lightness), and color purity. It was created by Professor Albert H Munsell in the first decade of the 20th century and adopted by the USDA as the official color system for soil research in the 1930's.
Several earlier color systems had placed colors into a three-dimensional color solid form. Munsell was the first to separate hue, value and color purity into perceptually uniform and independent dimensions, and he was the first to systematically illustrate the colors in three-dimensional space. Munsell's color wheel is based on the human subject's responses to color. Munsell's system is not widely taught because it is complex and other systems are simpler and easier to grasp, but because of this basis in human visual perception, Munsell’s system has outlasted its contemporary color models.
My views on the Munsell Color Wheel are shared by Anna Mason, who has explained in a video ...
The practical use for the Munsell Color Wheel is in determining color harmonies. You want your paintings to flow well and have colors that work well together. Most importantly, you want you paintings to be pleasing to the eye. In your painting, you ultimately want a large splash of the main color, in the diagram below this is red, with smaller splashes of homagenous colors (yellow and purple). The rest of the painting would then be focused on complimentary colors opposite the main color.
I have a tutorial where I have explained this and other color theory along with ways to incorporate the use of color in your painting.
I have a homemade wheel that I use in my painting, but I'll provide a link to Amazon so you can see what they look like. You'll note the pigment colors used in this one. I thought you might find that useful as well.
Munsell Color Wheel found at Amazon.com
Till next time ...
Joy