Orange .:. Blue

The second pair of complimentary colours is Orange .:. Blue.

Orange is the warmest colour, and blue is the coolest colour of the colour wheel. As orange tends to dominate because of its warmth, it can be a challenge to maintain a balance between these two colours in a design. -Deb Menz from ColourWorks

One of the things I so appreciate now about the Johannes Itten colour studies is how he personified and emotionalized colours. As many of you know, I have been learning to be more friendly with orange, and as I have read back through some of my old art school text books, I found whole sections of things that Itten wrote that I totally missed when I was younger.

I leave you with some philosophical words from Itten on Orange and Blue:

Orange, the mixture of yellow and red, is at the focus of maximum radiant activity. It has solar luminosity in the material sphere, attaining the maximum of warm, active energy in reddish orange. But festive orange too readily becomes proud external ostentation.

Blue is a contracted and introverted. Blue is a power like that of nature in winter, when all germination and growth is hidden in darkenss and silence. Blue is always shadowy, and tends in its greatest glory to darkness. It is an intangible nothing, and yet is present as the transparent atmosphere. Blue beckons our spirit with the vibrations of faith into the infinite distances of spirit.

When blue is dimmed, it falls into superstition, fear, grief, and perdition, but always it points to the realm of the transcendental.

Comments

[Derilyn]

This color combo is one of my favorites!