Complementary Color Mandala #Mijello #MissionGold #Watercolor

I've been working a bit larger than usual for me, using 10.5 x 10.5 inch paper.  I decided to do another mandala based on those I saw on Pat Howard's  Painted Prism blog.  The problem with this size, of course, is that I can't scan most of the paintings and have to take a photo instead.

It isn't entirely clear on Pat's blog what is being done with the mandalas, but I think it's easy enough to decide for yourself what to do.  In this case, I chose three colors (Permanent Yellow Deep, Permanent Red Deep, Prussian Blue) from my Mijello Mission gold palette, and mixed to get secondary orange, green and violet.  I chose colors that I felt were close in temperature (warm-yellow biased or cold-blue biased) and that I felt would mix clear bright colors, which I think they did.  That the reason for mandalas like this.  You can see exactly how well the colors mix.

I painted with lots of pigment in the center to get the deepest value, then lifted color from the center, to see how staining each was. Each section, I negative painted around the petals with moderate value, and I blotted in a few places to get a range of values.  The petals were painted with the complementary color (the color across from it on the wheel), trying to keep the values as light as possible.  Then I used the complementary color to shade.  In essence, this shading becomes a mix of ALL the colors on the wheel and an example of  how muddy the colors might get.  Not very muddy!

I highly recommend visiting the Painted Prism blog.  Pat doesn't have a tutorial for these mandalas, but she has many other free tutorials you can read online for free, or buy as a PDF for a good price.  Her work is beautiful, her tutorials excellent, and it's just a great resource.


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