The brief for our Unit 3 final assignment is to make a painting from our own experience which is important to us, using colors from a complementary scale. Complementary colors enhance each other’s intensity when placed right next to each other. Conversely they cancel each other out when mixed together which results in a wide range of brown/grey hues in a complementary color scale.
I experimented with a couple of complementary scales and wasn’t too keen on the red/green scale nor the blue/orange scale (there are multiple others as long as you pick opposite sides of the color wheel) so in the end I chose the yellow violet scale. I felt that the yellow was the brightest color on the wheel and the violet is quite a dark hue so this scale could give me a lot of options. Color theory tells us that yellow is a very dominant color compared to violet and for a balanced composition the ratio of yellow to violet would be 1:3. I’m not sure that I particularly want to create a balanced composition – but it’s good to know never the less. The tricky part again is choosing the subject. I cast around what I can see around me, what I have seen in the past – blasting through 20 years of digital photo albums for something that I felt inspired by.
In the course of going through our digital photographs I came across this one – which was a very high resolution scan of a painting which is very familiar to me. Ever since I can remember this painting was hanging on the wall in our home. My mum’s best friend Thelma emigrated to Australia before I was born and they strayed in constant touch throughout their lives. Thelma sent this painting back to my mum called Lemon Tree in Kelly’s Back Yard and it was a touchstone that allowed my mum to picture Thelma’s life in Australia. It was pretty much the only artwork we had in our house. I inherited it when my mum died and it has hung on our wall for twenty years and more. I had a strong suspicion that it wouldn’t match the specific criteria for the project – even though it is something I have seen most days for 60 plus years – and checking with Elizabeth my suspicions were confirmed – a project for another day, much the same as my other project which I was looking to produce for our primary assignment in unit 2.
