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Van Gogh: No Blue Without Yellow

In a letter to his friend Emile Bernard, Van Gogh wrote that there is no blue without yellow and without orange…

I started the sunflowers with an underpainting of dark red using soft pastel and then wetting it with water. I thought the vase a bit large, and that’s been made smaller. Next, I started adding layers of dry pastel in colors that are similar those found in Still Life with Quince Pears and Vase With Twelve Sunflowers.

Step 1 is a wash with pastel. Step 2, the first few layers

In my last post, I began discussing opposite colors, and their position on the color wheel. On a standard color wheel, the opposite of blue is orange, and the opposite of yellow is purple. So why have I been using opposites to describe a color sheme of yellow and blue?

According to Wikipedia, painters traditionally regard the complement of yellow as the color indigo, which is a blue-violet.

Step 3, more pastel

Munsell’s color system uses five primaries and doesn’t include orange. Orange is considered yellow-red, and opposites range from blues to blue-greens. I’m using blue-greens and blue-violets as complements for the yellow/yellow-red colors.

I’ll be adding some golden browns to help tone down the flowers, but I like that little bit of toned paper that’s still showing at the bottom. I’m not crazy about the mutant blossom in the upper right, and I’ll have that fixed the next time you see this. It will have to be soon, too, because I’m running out of February!!