Tags
acrylic, afterimage, Athens Georgia, Camille Pissarro, Color Contrasts, color harmony, color wheel, complementary color, complementary color harmony, Daily Painting, drawing, expressive, Gardenscape, Georgia, Hibiscus coccineus, muslin, Native Plants, nature, Painting, Pastel, process, Quote, simultaneous contrast, spring, Studio, Swamp Hibiscus, Swamp Hibiscus (Hibiscus coccineus)
Swamp Hibiscus 03 (opening blooms)
(Hibiscus coccineus)
(acrylic, pastel and charcoal on muslin)
I decided I wanted build this painting through the complementarities or opposites. I wanted pop and sizzle for this vibrant and showy flower and using compliments is a good way of doing this. There are 3 complementary pairs: yellow+violet; blue+orange; red+green. The complementary color harmony is a wonder. Each pair of compliments contains a primary and its opposite on the color wheel, a secondary created by mixing the other two primaries.
The harmony of complements is about balance. A color demands it’s opposite. In the phenomenon of afterimage and simultaneity lies the explanation. If you stare at a color for a moment then close your eyes you will see it’s complement as the eye refreshes itself with the afterimage or your eye will create the opposite where it does not exist while you are looking at the color this is simultaneous contrast.
Another addition to the way I worked up this painting was to use some pastel as the final touch to the piece. It just seemed to be the thing to do and I think it worked out quite well for me.
“We call two colors complementary if their pigments mixed together yield a gray-black…light of two complementary mixed together will yield white.”
Two such colors make a strange pair. They are opposites. They require each other. They excite each other to maximum vividness when adjacent; and they annihilate each other, to gray-black when mixed- like fire and water.
(page 49)Itten, Johannes, (1970). The Elements of Color. 1st ed. NewYork, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
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