Colour Harmony

Beginnings of "Even the Rocks"

My world is gray these days. This is not an unhappy place to be. Rather, I enjoy the colour combinations complementary colours make. My goal, colour harmony.

Gather the ingredients 

For the past little while I have used a balanced mix of two in two different sets. Equal proportions produce lovely grays and blacks. No two combinations produce the same result. Exciting accidents happen with a little water spray. For a more exciting colour harmony I threw in a few drops of pure colour. 

We begin with blue

In pursuit of these accidents, I decided to widen the gray colour range. The texture, coloured gesso base and multi-layered individual colours remain as my awesome surfaces. Widening the range means finding more spice bottles and slanting the middle toward one complementary colour or the other. To widen the colour harmony further, I add a second combination in more spice bottles.

Now for red and green

Once three bottles are primed with GAC 100 and liquid medium (50-50), a little water (about ten percent) is added before pure colour is introduced. Now we have the middle gray of the original orange and blue with two more in the same range. Instead of equal proportions, more orange than blue goes into one jar and more blue than orange into the other. Now we have the original colours and the gray of equal proportions as well as two others to add to the mix. My other favorite combination is red and green.

Red and green make purple?

The reason behind this innovation came from my disappointment with the lack of separation on the canvas. When I first began using the gray mixtures, the colours were not quite blended and they separated into beautiful puddles after the spray and drying time. I wanted more happy accidents while still creating colour harmony.

All six grays 

Keeping to one colour combination tends to be somewhat limited so I continue to throw more than one at the canvas. Now instead of three combinations, I capitalise on nine, two sets of complementary colours and their original pure colour sources. Throwing paint is still an adventure. Spraying and turning the canvas to create trails of different colour is still exciting. One never knows how the colour harmony will exactly look in the end.  Next time we will explore the results of throwing colour at the canvas. Life is good.