Moses Botkin Monthly Painting Challenge: Complements

As you may recall, each of us in my Challenge Group takes a turn choosing what we'll paint. For May, Robin Cheers came up an interesting idea for us: "Paint your subject of choice only with purples/yellows - complements. You can add white lets say, but not black. Only mix the complements to make grays or use them in full color."



So... a painting using only purple and yellow, along with white. Since I didn't have any tube purples on hand, I mixed up a batch from Ultramarine Blue and Thio Violet (a magenta pigment). For yellow I considered using a transparent Hansa Yellow but decided on the more brilliant, opaque, and warmer Cadmium Yellow Medium.

I knew I could get a nice brown with my mixed purple and the yellow I chose, and some decent tans using white and little more yellow. Lavender/violet hues were a given with purple and white, but I sure missed using reds and greens.

You can read more about this at my blog, and see the rest of the group's paintings, as well. Above is mine.

I also wanted to try the concept with complements of orange and blue, so painted a similar piece, also above. You can read more about this one also at my blog post. Both pieces were a lot of fun and I enjoyed the challenge.

©2010 Diana Moses Botkin