Tip of the Month - November 2001

Did you ever think about the choosing of warm/cool relationships as a need to find visual balance? We make these choices everyday when deciding what we will be wearing. I even do this when I plan a special dinner party.

When it was decided that I would have a web site, one of the first decisions to be made was the DOMINANT background color. I am a warm dominance painter. The background needed to be cool and serene. I turned to greens, blues, and violets.

These colors were not what I was looking for. I wanted the cool,serene look in a middle value color. That is how I arrived at the blue-violet for the site.

Yellow-green and peach were my choices for the warm accents.

When I create a painting, I need to think about and plan warm/cool relationships as I do in other aspects of my life. The relationships of warm/cool when applied with thought in a painting can give the work vitality and sparkle.

Think about adding warm into a cool shape.

Think about adding cool into a warm shape.

Remember warm shapes come forward, and cool colors recede. Another way to look at the warm/cool relationship is to think that warm and cool colors are contrasting colors.


More Tips

For more information join Barbara's "tips" mailing list.