Color Variations 7 - Complementaries

Color Variations 7 - Complementaries

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Colored pencil on paper, 6.5" x 10"
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A complementary is something that fills up, completes, or makes something else perfect. A "pair of contrasting colors that produce a neutral color when combined in suitable proportion" is Webster's dictionary definition of complementary colors. Red and green are complementary pairs, so are blue and orange, and so are yellow and violet.

An artist who knows that 1) these pairs of colors show a strong contrast when placed next to each other, and also that 2) they mix together to give neutral brownish-grays has two marvellous options for working with color.

I pressed hard on the colored pencil to give as saturated a color as possible, and in the drawing, the ribbon of red, orange and yellow shimmers with a high contrast against the corresponding green, blue and violet sections of the background.
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