Complementary colours

I love colours!
So I had to explore a little when I found this interesting article on Marc Taro Holmes' Twitter feed.
It's called a modern approach to complementaries, by Delphine Doreau. An interesting little article, which actually complements quite well my favourite book on colour theory "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green". Basically, reality is more complex than saying that green is the opposite of red, yellow the opposite of purple, and orange the opposite of blue. It's more of a "greeny blue is opposite to reddy orange", i.e. Turquoise is the complementary of Intense red
And I love (looooove) the combination of intense red (like Pyrrole red) and turquoise (like PG50).  I must I must paint those two together!

So, as Delphine describes in her article that she used the Invert Colour feature in Photoshop, I did the same in Picasa, using samples from a few of my working palettes. And now I am drooling at the gorgeous colours that appeared before me.

This is my Schmincke palette and its opposite - Plenty of blue complementaries, but overall a bit of a mishmash of colours. That's what happens when you buy a ready-made palette

Now, this one I put together myself, using colours I love and use a lot. And now I know why - it contains within itself all the perfect complementaries - the turquoises to match the reds, the yellows to match the blues!

This one is a smaller version of the above palette, and one of my favourites for going on sketching outings. See why I like it so much: Quinacridone gold complements cobalt blue, PV19 complements Phthalo Green, PG50 complements Pyrrole Red, etc etc. So, a small little palette, but lots and lots of possibilities!

And this one is my newest palettes, assembled with some of the colours used by some of my favourite urban sketchers (Marc Taro Holmes mostly), and while it's not perfectly balanced, I can see why Buff Titanium goes so well with Moonglow, and English Venitian Red is perfect for Prussian Blue! Quickly becoming my Number One palette for urban sketching!