More fun with complementary colours

Meet Harry, a Pig with a Purpose.
He is part of my growing "funny farm" which includes so far 3 sheep and this pig.
Watch for coming attractions: goats, chickens, ducks, pigs. All in fabulous and fashionable complementary colours.
Art doesn't have to be so serious; some fun is allowed and encouraged.

It is painted on PastelMat with soft pastels and measures 0.3 x 0.24m

Underpainting with complementary colours

In this piece I started by using complementary colours throughout the whole painting, maintaining the values in the original reference photo (I used a black and white photocopy to help me see the values better).
So, the sky was different shades of orange, as was the water. The building was green, the shadows were yellow.

The white parts of the clouds were... white. White is not a color - it is light, it has no complementary. Black is not a colour - it is absence of light, it has no complementary either.
When I finished the complementary underpainting, it looked very "interesting", like a Mars landscape... (a "Marscape"?)
So I went back and applied the "real" colour on top, and voila! we are back on Earth - Peggy's Cove, to be precise.

Using complementary colours as an underpainting to a landscape theme adds luminosity to it.
It is painted on sandpaper with soft pastels and measures 0.3 x 0.46m.

Fun with Complementary colours

An orange sheep? Sure! Why not?

Complementary colours sit opposite each other on the colour wheel and "call each other out" to play, they add vibrancy to a painting.

They are pairs of a primary colour (red, yellow and blue) and a secondary colour that does not contain it.
As in: orange (yellow + red) and blue; green (yellow + blue) and red; purple (blue + red) and yellow.
In these examples the colour of the sheep is complementary to the colour of the backgound.
The orange sheep is in a private collection.