Compliments of Your Computer

by Roy Zuniga

I was on my computer composing a little matrix of colors to aid the distribution on a palette colors in what I call an opposing complements layout, starting with coolest opposing hottest at the top:

I like this palette because it puts colors that neutralize each other in direct opposition. As I found the colors in the computer color picker for my reference card, I realized that the increments between color numbers were sometimes regular (about 11) -- especially in the range of Yellow/Violet and Green/Red -- and sometimes much larger, as in the Turquoise related hues (which lack complements in the historical model). The computer has a color model (Hue, Saturation, Lightness or HSL) built in (one of several). So I took the highest number (255) and divided by 12 = 21.25. This yielded both the traditional colors we're used to, as well as a few others that fall into main steps (Red is both 0 and 255 because color space wraps):

Shuffling these regular step colors into my old opposing complements model, I noticed there were anomalies, i.e. half steps as well as gaps (shown in black):

The traditional model is shifted and lacks some complements (like those for Turqoise-Blue (149) and Green-Turquoise (106)), and has falsely paired some colors with half-step colors (for example, Orange-Yellow (32) and Red-Orange (11)). So I normalized the colors according to full steps and opposed them so the difference in numbers was always 128:

We'll call this the 'Normalized 12-Step Opposing Complements' model that arranges complements according to the computer color space. This yields a very pleasing matrix that also makes sense mathematically.

Could it be that the traditional theory of complimtary colors that survives in our art books is an evolution of observation limited by the pigments available and is not accurate.

This may explain why mixing direct complements in the old model sometimes shifted tinted colors into adjacent color spaces and didn't strictly neutralize. The traditional model is close enough that subtle shifts in low intensity colors were not perceived or ignored. Moreover, since artists pigments rarely have colors that directly align with the steps, we're used to mixing several colors. In practice, the artist's eye overrides the theory, which is always just an aide to getting started. For these reasons, the traditional model has gone unchallenged in artist's circles. I would encourage artists to validate or invalidate this 12-Step Normalized Complements model.

Now, I'm going to stop messing with the computer and start creating art -- Happy Painting!

copyright 2009 roy zuniga