Studio - Red/Turquise Composition - Complementary Colour Scheme - Red: Love or Danger?

Red/Turquise Composition, originally uploaded by James Wellock.

This particular composition has been designed to show the effect of the complementary colour scheme. Here red and its opposite colour on the colour wheel, turquise have been used to show conlfict and opposition. I've tried to display the theme of love and danger visually, as it interested me that the colour red can be so contrasted in connotation. If you ask someone to say a feeling red gives them they could say love, passion, careness but they could also easily say danger, evil and wickedness. Its this astonishing difference that made me want to use this specific colour scheme as I feel it reflects the colour red perfectly.

This colour scheme is extrmemly useful when you want something to stand out, it offers a massive amount of contrast. Due to this then it is alot harder to harmonise than any other colour scheme and is mostly used when a direct simple order or message is needed to be displayed.

Colour psychology states that red is the most emotionally intense colour of all, for example it is the colour of love. It is an extreme colour and it is advised that it should be not worn in moments of negotiation as it can make the other party feel uncomfortable. More often than not red will make an object look ten times better than it would in any other colour but this can have a down side, for example statistics show that more red cars are stolan than any other cars in other colours.