Complementary Colours - the watercolour way!

 

If you are not colour-blind, pictures in the above colour combinations, always jump at you... Orange-blue, red-green, yellow-purple, they are great contrasting colours - like black and white. They are called 'complementary colours' (not to be confused with complimentary colours!) and they are so contrasting, because they have nothing in common, like black has nothing in common with white...
The 3 primary/basic/pure colours are Red, Yellow and Blue. If you mix two of the three primary colours, you get a secundary colour - and the third colour, the one which is not used in that mix, is its complementary colour. See also the triangle:

The complementaries are opposite each other, and they always are the whole spectrum together.
Red vs Green = Red vs (Yellow + Blue); Yellow vs Purple = Yellow vs (Blue + Red); Blue vs Orange = Blue vs (Yellow + Red)...

NB - In watercolours, adding a complimentary colour as a shadow, works like a warm organic grey tone, much less 'hard' than, say, Payne's Grey, or black. 

The Aquarellistas got their inspiration out of the complementaries - and it worked so well for them... have look at the results!

 Sylvie D. is back from her travels and used green vs red for this very Magic Mushroom...

Red vs green for Sheila who had a good struggle but ended up creating this!

 Complementary at its best!! Elia's frog, epoustouflant!!!

 Have to post these two, although not finished, by Liz - my fav complementary combi Orange & blue... SO Liz!

The only purple-yellow combination, by Marie-Claire - not completely finished yet already working as a splashing contrast

 Brigitte started this huge red pepper, it is recognizable as a shape but wait until there are lots of complementary green around it - how exciting!

There was also a lot of time and effort into other watercolours, I will post about them later...