Colors have relationships with each other based on their relative positions on the Color Wheel. Many of these relationships have to do with how they can be used “harmoniously” in a “color scheme”. Neighbors on the wheel harmonize well together, and colors further apart on the wheel create more visual “excitement” and are trickier to combine.

This actually has to due with the eye’s level of discomfort perceiving the full range of the spectrum of light. The same thing is true of photographic film - it can’t duplicate the full range of the color spectrum accurately, and you are always having to compromise on one end to get the best representation of the other.

We will explore color schemes next month. Right now, we are going to take a look at the most complex and interesting relationship a pair of colors can have.

Just because Blue is my favorite color, and for no other logical reason, I am going to use the Blue-Orange pair of complements for my demos in this article. Strangely, Orange is my least favorite color - which probably has nothing to do with anything - I just think it’s interesting.

The first really magic thing two complements can do for each other is affect each other’s intensity (as in human relationships?!?)

Intensity refers to the brilliance of a color. Colors of the highest intensity are those we usually refer to as colors that “pop”. Think of the last time you said, “oooh, that color is too intense!” and you will understand what we are talking about. Colors as they appear on the color wheel are said to be at their fullest intensity.

The opposite of intense is gray. If you mix equal portions of two complements together, you get gray. It’s important to remember that there are warm grays and cool grays and blue grays and brown grays (colors like what we call “taupe” for example). There are actually an infinite number of possible grays to be had by mixing complements.

Most often, we don’t want grays, but rather just a less intense version of a color. I have heard artists say that they don’t like a certain line of paints because the colors are too intense. Well, that can be easily remedied. To “gray” or “de-intensify” a color, just add little bits of its complement. The swatches below demonstrate the effect of adding drops of Orange to Blue and drops of Blue to Orange. Keep adding until you get what you are looking for.