Art Tip: Complementary Colors

The Launch Pad blog is now featuring useful writing and art tips for aspiring writers and artists ages 6 - 12. Our first tip is on using complementary colors.

Complementary colors are the colors that are opposite from each other on the color wheel:

Red and Green
Orange and Blue
Yellow and Purple

Using complementary colors in a piece of artwork makes the colors stand out more, and almost always makes a good piece of art great. Hannah Schmitt, age 10, used complementary colors in her illustrations for At the Magical Fountain. Look at how she used bits of bright pink (pink is really light red!) to complement her greens and make the artwork interesting.



Read the poem and look at all the artwork in the Fairy Tales and Fantasy Issue:
Fairy Tales and Fantasy Issue