Complementary

I carried on painting today. I’m just doing a bit at a time because I tend to get very stressed over painting, which doesn’t happen when I draw or make original prints. So I’m just dashing over to it, slapping some acrylic paint on it, then dashing away to do something else. Today I put a wash of orange over the yellow towards the bottom of the canvas roll. It’s a complementary colour to the blue and I like using complementary colours – they create such intensity. I also started to block in some darker areas on the overalls, overlaying the cerulean with a red-biased pthalo blue. I’m using Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics, mostly transparent or translucent as I like layering glazes over each other. This is a portrait of the artist Patti McJones that I started 5 years ago, it’s a big piece, almost life size.