Page:Elementary Color (IA gri c00033125012656167).djvu/79

 While in the use of colored papers the dominant harmony may be the simplest and the one in which there is least danger of really bad work, some of the combinations are much better than others, and superiority is perhaps secured as much by the relative quantities of each tone used in a composition as in the selecting of the tones. In the entire range of the spectrum even this class of harmonies involves problems too complex to be solved by a few rules, but it is a very interesting field in which the children may safely be allowed to roam and experiment.

Complementary Harmonies may perhaps be classified next to dominant because they are more easily described and more definitely limited than those effects termed Analogous Harmonies. A pure Complementary Harmony consists of the combination of tones from two scales which are complementary to each other. For example, the red scale is complementary to the blue-green scale, as also the green to the violet-red, and so on throughout the entire range of the spectrum scales.

As explained on Page 50, the complementary of any color can be determined by means of the color wheel, or nearly enough for aesthetic purposes with the color top. But even though the colors complementary to each other may be determined scientifically there will always remain ample opportunity for the exhibition of color sense and artistic feeling in the choice of colors because the difference between a very beautiful composition in complementary harmony and an indifferently good one may be found in the choice of tones, or in the proportions of each and their arrangement with relation to each other. This harmony certainly contains great possibilities with comparatively few limitations.

While it is perhaps approximately true that complementaries are harmonious in combination, yet best authorities do not seem to fully sustain this opinion and it is quite evident that pure tones of some complementary pairs when combined are very hard in their effects, if not positively unpleasant. This can be relieved