Sometimes my students are so smart. Today my 6-8th grade class completely stumped me and I need help finding the answer to their question. We are working with complementary colors and I told them if they mix a complementary color set it should make some version of brown. So the kids then asked....what is the complementary color to brown?
Well hum...... Brown is not on the color wheel so is it a neutral? In that case it would not have a complimentary color right? I started pondering the visible light spectrum to answer the question and realized brown must be in the spectrum somewhere, somehow, or we would not be able to see it.
Ok so my smart readers what, or is there, a complementary color to brown?
I'm probably wrong in saying this but I usually say that there are warm browns and cool browns (depending on the mixture). If it is warm then they treat it as an orange or whatever hue it resembles. Same thing for the cool brown. I know, I know, not scientifically correct but it usually works.
ReplyDeletewhile searching the internet I keep finding people that say blue green in the comp color of brown....but I don't know/understand what their reasoning is
ReplyDeleteBrown is a degraded version of other colors. So, a complement of Brown would be based -by my reasoning- on which degraded colors were used in a specific brown. Warm browns tend to be more red/orange, so I would agree that a blue/green would complement. But, cool browns tend to hue purple, so in that case I would tend towards are more yellowed warm brown. . . At least, that is how I think of brown complements when I paint.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I've never really thought to much about this before. I have always just included brown in the neutral family.
ReplyDeleteI love the reasoning in the post above - it really makes sense.
Here is my theory- let me know if you think it is sound!!
ReplyDeleteIf you mix complements, you de-saturate them, creating a brown. I think "crayon brown" is actually pretty close to red/orange, with a little blue-green added to it. The compliment of your brown is another brown that is on the other side of the red-green or yellow-violet or blue-orange spectrum. Now, what a totally and actually neutral brown is, I am not sure.
Interesting discussion! If you add black to orange paint, you will also get a brown (though different than the one you get mixing comps), which is one reason that some might say blue or blue-green for a comp to brown. But we've all seen those nasty greenish browns (we call it baby-poop brown) and I guess I'd use red as a comp for that. Boy, you never know what people will be talking about on the blogs!
ReplyDeleteit all depends in your mood, you can compliment brown saying: you have a beautiful eye ball around you. in case you want to compliment charlie brown, in that case you say: "your snoopy looks so white today"
ReplyDeletejust kidding. as you may noticed.
each brown has it's own complementary colour, depending on the amounts of colours containing inside of it.
i made a little experiment in my photoshop. and when you turn all shades of brown into their negative (or complementary, i think) colour, they are all values from cyan and blue. which reminds me, the easiest way to create a decent brown, is adding black to a perfect orange. (perfect orange! ha)
wow this is an interesting conversation to what seems to be a complex question!
ReplyDeleteI've always learned that blue and brown are complements since brown is a shade of orange...
ReplyDeleteOk I'm going to say our unofficial official verdict is either blue or blue green.
ReplyDeleteLet me see here; the electronic color code rainbow goes Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White, and Black. Subtracting the last three leaves you with kind of a rainbow with seven colors (Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet) and so 180º away from 0º is a Greenish Yellow. Which kind of makes sense if you think about it.
ReplyDeleteBrown includes all three primary colors so technically, it doesn't have a complement.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, you could look at the composition of your brown color and, if it doesn't contain equal parts of all three primary colors (Blue Yellow Red) than you could arguably take the complements of the three primary colors. So if, for example, you start with a reddish brown, you would end up with a greenish brown.
Your question is taking me back to my art school color theory days. The answer above is pretty much what I was going to reply with. Also, if you are working with perfect compliments on the color wheel, the mixture should actually come out as mid-value grey. It is difficult to achieve, but is possible!
DeleteWow, almost 2 years after you wrote this blog, I came axross ut hoping to settle a "discussion" between a group of teenage boys, about browns complinent. Well, everyone's opinion was representrd! Now they're off to talking about anime art :)
ReplyDeleteOne way to find the complementary colors of your brown checkerboard would be to copy the image above in Photoshop, go to "Image" then "Adjust" then "Invert" to find the complementary colors -- which are blue! Hence brown is a shade of orange!
ReplyDeleteThank you! My high school class is doing underpaintings in complementary colors and students were asking what the complementary colors for brown and gray were. This helps a lot, and makes sense!
ReplyDeleteI always went with grey. Since brown is the addition of the three hues (red, blue and yellow), then reflectively the addition of the other two colors not used (black and white) would make sense. Any thoughts?
ReplyDelete