maroon and gold

Maroon and gold are the colors of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers.  Which has me thinking about color theory since so many sport’s teams have complimentary team colors. When I am making my STILL compositions, I am not thinking about color theory as I typically work fast and intuitively. But, at my workshops I am often asked to talk a bit about flat-lay composition techniques. So, that is when I think about color theory. I like color theory. It is not super complicated, and it is fairly easy to visualize and understand. With STILL, I have my favorite color techniques. You may recognize that I like to create:

• monochrome gradients (moving out along one spoke of the color wheel),
• near-neighbor (analogous) groupings (staying in one quadrant of the color wheel), and
• complimentary pairings (working directly across the color wheel)

Goldenrod and aster are good examples of complimentary colors. Yellow, orange and red sumac in full autumn flame are analogous. And new-growth greens as they darkens into summer maturity offer abundant gradients. I find all of these pleasing. You could say they just feel natural to me.

day-lilies in maroon and gold