Complementary Pigments

Tuesday, 24 November 2015, 6pm.

I prepared this post for those artists who exploit complementary colours, whether mixing or glazing them to make darks, layering them to generate energy, or side-by-side to create colour contrasts.

I’m using the Maunsell colour wheel as my base. From ‘The Art of Colour and Design’ by Maitland Graves, recommended to me long ago by Rod Milgate, and a bible of mine ever since. Unlike conventional colour wheels, this one is based on the actual wavelength of the hue. The distance between red and yellow is half that of the other primaries. In effect, the wheel is divided into five sections, (blue to purple/purple to red/red to yellow/yellow to green/green to blue) rather than the conventional six (blue to purple/purple to red/red to orange/orange to yellow/yellow to green/green to blue). Blue/orange (which is listed as YR) is the only complementary alignment that this wheel shares with conventional colour wheels.

In the following image, I’ve put a complementary arrangement of colours inside the Maunsell colour wheel. All I’ve done is rotate the original wheel 180 degrees to align the outer colours with their inner complements. I apologise for the inaccurate colour representation, it comes from a very old colour photocopy. But you get the general idea.

That’s all very well for colour, but what about actual pigments, bits of ground-up rock and chemicals? This list of commonly used pigments is as close as I can come to an actual colour wheel and the associated complemantary pigments. Backslashes indicate approximate hue equivalence. Of course, most secondaries can be mixed, rather than using alla prima pigments. Tone is ignored in this list.

PIGMENT                                        COMPLEMENTARY

Cadmium Yellow (medium)                               Ultramarine

Cadmium Yellow Light                                      Ultramarine/Alizarin Crimson mix/

Lemon Yellow                                                  Cobalt Violet Dark

Australian Green Gold                                      Flinders Blue Violet/Indigo

Terre Verte

Australian Leaf Green Light                              Alizarin Crimson

Sap Green

Permanent Green Light                                     Spectrum Crimson/Cadmium Red Deep

Prussian Green

Oxide of Chromium

Cadmium Green                                               Cadmium Red

Manganese Blue

Cerulean Blue/Pthalo Blue                                Chrome Orange

Tasman Blue                                                    

Cobalt Blue                                                     Cadmium Orange

Antwerp Blue/Prussian Blue                             Camium Red and Cadmium Yellow mix

Ultramarine                                                      Cadmium Yellow (medium)

And so we come full circle.

One thing to note is the preponderance of greens in my palette. I’m a landscape painter at heart.