/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

God damn it. How do you guys come up with nice, vibrant colours?

I have a cyanish-blue dragon. Because complementary colours are supposed to look good, I want to put it in a reddish-orange environment: I'm thinking of some volcano with lava (that will supply red rim light) and a throne made out of stone. But if I'll just make it orange and cyan it looks awful, dragon clearly doesn't belong there, it looks like a collage made out of random, completely different illustrations. So I'm mixing colours of my dragon with colours of environment: it turns out purple. But at the same time everything becomes muddy and so ugly that my eyes hurt.
I've been fiddling with those thumbnails for the last 2 hours and I still can't figure it out. I really could use some tips. I just want some vibrant, eye-catching colors.