A couple of weeks ago I took a workshop on figure painting by David Shevlino. The supply list included primed boards. He asked us to use a mid-range gray as tone. I tinted Gesso with black, ultramarine and red acrylic to arrive at my gray. I prefer a little hue to my grays. The cool background worked very well with the color mixtures David demonstrated as his flesh tones; yellow ochre, cadmium orange and dioxine purple for flesh in the light and burnt sienna, dioxine purple and olive green for flesh in shadow. On the second day, we painted the model shown here. I blocked in the painting (see below) and began to lay in the light flesh tones. I added some blue in the background where a blue cloth was hanging. When I turned away, then turned back, I wondered how or why I had used the blue on the figure itself... and realized I had not, but the warm flesh tones acted as the complement to the cool gray background to make the background look like blue.
The illusion was startling. Look at the top photo, which I cropped down to hide most of the background tint, then the second photo in which you can see the blue in her forehead as you compare it to the background on the left and the blue cloth on the right. Each time I looked at it, my brain saw blue, not gray, though I had only painted blue in the background cloth.
Complements are powerful, we know we can use them to neutralize color by mixing, and to enhance color by laying them side by side. This illusion from the workshop is a great reminder.
Each Sunday, a wonderful gentleman brings bunches of flowers to our church, there for the taking, and we are all encouraged to bring some home. There is always a variety. I bring them home sometimes, the fresh cut flowers are a nice counterpoint to the gray of winter here in New England. Yesterday we brought home a bunch of beautiful, deep magenta asters. I chose to draw the without their color, loving the interesting petal shapes and the negative space they create, which I painted in the complements of the magenta. Can you imagine the magenta in the white space? Remember, as a kid, doing that exercise where you stared without blinking at a brightly colored image for a minute without blinking. Then, you shifted your gaze to a white surface and the color's complements show. I tried with this drawing from the computer screen and it didn't work... will try with the original drawing and see if I can get the illusion to work.
This is my hundred forty-fifth daily drawing. Thank you for looking.
This week, I set up a lesson using a painting by terrific artist, Carol Marine (See her work at the link here) Carol's work is strong and very accessible to my middle-school students. I chose this painting by Carol for its color scheme, whimsy, and cropped subject matter. The students needed to make a thumbnail sketch, then paint it in watercolor, using no black nor brown. On a couple of the paint sets, I had to use "caution tape" to cover the black and brown just in case they "forgot." We talked about black, brown, tan, gray, etc, and how they need to make those tones using complements after naming the black, brown, tan, gray, etc, by using one of the primary or secondary colors as adjective. "Green gray", "orange brown", "reddish tan". They got the hang of it. We'll finish this week.
Thanks for looking!
A couple of weeks ago I took a workshop on figure painting by David Shevlino. The supply list included primed boards. He asked us to use a mid-range gray as tone. I tinted Gesso with black, ultramarine and red acrylic to arrive at my gray. I prefer a little hue to my grays. The cool background worked very well with the color mixtures David demonstrated as his flesh tones; yellow ochre, cadmium orange and dioxine purple for flesh in the light and burnt sienna, dioxine purple and olive green for flesh in shadow. On the second day, we painted the model shown here. I blocked in the painting (see below) and began to lay in the light flesh tones. I added some blue in the background where a blue cloth was hanging. When I turned away, then turned back, I wondered how or why I had used the blue on the figure itself... and realized I had not, but the warm flesh tones acted as the complement to the cool gray background to make the background look like blue. 
