May Challenge: Complements Purple and Yellow

As you may recall, each of us in my Challenge Group takes a turn choosing what we'll paint. This month, member 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. This was a challenge I had never attempted before: welcome but a little scary. Turns out, I really enjoyed seeing how much I could push the very limited palette. Plus, I learned a lot.

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.

That said, I was actually quite surprised by how much variety I achieved with only purple, yellow and white. Color comparisons had to suffice for the perceived range since the actual extent of available colors was so limited.

Layering colors worked better than mixing for some of the hues in my painting. I was able to get some fairly intense darks with layers of purple with a little yellow in the mix. And layering a lavender tone over light yellow gave me a pink of sorts. Not a luscious glowing scarlet by any means, but a semblance of pinker flesh tones,more than using just the yellow and purple mixed browns.

(left) "Dancer at the Bar"
7"x5" Oil on hardboard
©2010 Diana Moses Botkin

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I think all the Group's paintings are very interesting and I enjoyed going to each one's blog to read about how the artist approached this month's Challenge. I hope you will too!

(left) "Sophia" 16" x 20" Oil on Canvas ©2010 Suzanne Berry
(French Ultramarine Blue/Alizarin Crimson mix, Cadmium Yellow Medium, and Titanium White)

(above right) "Study in Complements" 8x10" Oil on Panel ©2010 Robin Cheers
(Ultramarine Blue/Quinacridone Red mix, Hansa Yellow and White)

(left)
"Sliced Plum on Wood Block"
5x5”
Oil on Panel
©2010 Jeanne Illenye
(Cadmium Red / French Ultramarine Blue mix,
Cadmium Yellow and White)

(left)
“PY Study"
9x12”
Oil on Panel
©2010 Vicki Ross
(Cobalt Violet, Cadmium Lemon,
and Titanium White)