An art lesson for the teacher: painting with complementary colors

 

"Orange and Blue" 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

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There's probably a rule of thumb for teachers that they should thoroughly test out any lesson they're planning to impose on those who've signed up for their class. Well, setting rules of thumb (and all common sense) aside, I didn't. Ok, ok, to be fair, I've done this one before! When I was 15 years old, but still. Preparation.

So, knowing *roughly* what was going to happen, I launched right into my demo, and once again found myself learning right along with my students. It blew my mind, actually: with only two tubes of paint and white, I mixed a palette, that, to my pigment-starved eye looked like an entire rainbow!

Click on the pictures below to see them bigger, and read my notes without a magnifying glass:

A closer look at my palette:

 

Then, blindly pretending that this was an all-day workshop instead of a three-hour class, I proceeded to suggest that we pick another color and add it into the mix, just to see what happened:

 

"The Power of Three" 

6 x 6"

oil on canvas

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With the addition of Alizarin Crimson, my original complementary palette became a veritable rainbow. Just look at it:

  

If I seem a little excited, it's because I'm brimming with all the possibilities of limited palettes to try. When you call it "color theory," my soul shrivels a little (possibly remembering torture by color-aid, freshman year at MICA), but when it's just me and my palette knife - that is fun.