Okay, I know that you're wincing at that "-e". My readers are a discerning bunch, to be sure. But in fact, it's complements-with-an-E that we're concerned with, as hinted in the previous post's colour wheel.
Colour theory can get complicated, and my camera hasn't helped with its tendency to blue a lot of the tones. But we're after terminology here, of the kind commonly used by artists. Red-Yellow-Blue are primary colours. Orange-Green-Purple are secondary colours. And colours opposite each other on the colour wheel are...ta tum!...complementary colours.
Placed next to each other, colour complements will "pop", emphasizing each other's quality -- even though, if mixed together, they might resemble mud.
That explains complement with an "E" -- and as for the "I", I have no compliments to bestow on explorer David Douglas, the third of the botanists honoured in VanDusen Garden.
It's unreasonable of me, I know, but I don't think it's fair that his name is assigned to the Douglas Fir when it was Archibald Menzies who first identified the tree for a European audience when he travelled to Vancouver Island. Douglas didn't even make it to BC, for goodness sake.
Menzies gets the credits in botanical nomenclature, with the official label that also reveals a little-known fact -- the species is a "pseudotsuga" -- not even a real fir!!! Nonetheless, those pesky art students who have been roaming around VanDusen for over a year now couldn't leave without a nod to the renowned Scot. Earlier in the year, they asked Dr. Menzies to hold his pose and then put Linnaeus in perspective. What art school pranks could they play on David Douglas?
I spent weeks, it seems, making suggestions -- like "the rule of thirds," a nifty compositional device, or putting him in a frame, both to no avail.
Then it happened that I made another visit to VanDusen when it first opened this June -- and saw Douglas again, basking in the rose garden.
When I looked at my photo later and saw the rich green against the vibrant red, I knew that colour complements would be the theme. I tried this out in a tiny colour study.
Okay, this just might work....so I did a slightly larger study as a baseline for scaling up to my 20x26" paper.
Truth be told, this is where I should have spent much more time, on both the layout and the colours. The final version is not what I'd hoped for, but it's been somewhat instructive. Can you spot the pairs of colour complements?
After all, this has really been about having fun splashing paint around.
