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Color Study 7: Split Complementary

Remember complementary colors? Ones that are directly opposite each other on the color wheel, with a straight line as the visual memory-clue? Well, a split complementary is similar, but instead of going straight across the color wheel, the line splits into a skinny “Y” on one side, like this:

I selected red-violet (a very dark shade of it). The complement—the one just opposite on the color wheel–is yellow-green. If you make a “Y” instead of an “I”, you’ll get a skinny triangle that touches red-violet, yellow and green. I have a couple of traditional quilts I’ve made using this combination, but I think it is because it is a combination found often in nature, including my Gramma’s favorite, pansies!

Well, piffle! I just looked in my files, and I don’t have any digitals of my purple-yellow-green quilts in digital! Over the next few days I’ll try to dig them out and take pictures to share. Anyway, for the “quiltlet” side of this lesson, I finally gave in to my urge to do representational. Using a “vertical” composition, I made flowers out of pale yellow, deep and deeper darker red-violet, and green. I plan to “meld” the colors of the flowers with the quilting thread, so it will be interesting to see the difference between the quilted and unquilted scans.

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