Complementary colours and Paul Gauguin

This time around, we explored complimentary colours by looking at the works of Paul Gauguin.
We studied his extraordinary use of weird and wacky colour palettes to paint his bold, colorful and design oriented paintings.

While we explored many of Gauguin’s artworks, we also explored colour mixing by creating our own Tempera paints. These paints were then used to create our own colour swatches with every colour receiving a fun and wacky name!

Every year 7 student was then given a landscape photograph to work from. I laminated each picture – just so I would get them back in one piece at the end of the lesson!
We studied the colour wheel with particular focus on identifying the complimentary colours.

Their task was then to re-create their photograph with personally made Tempera paints and swapping every colour in their photograph with its complimentary. It meant that everyone spent 2 double periods referring to the colour wheel to work out what colour they needed to use! By the end of it – they knew complimentary colours inside out!