I love exploring the colour theory with children in many different ways. They always get so excited about mixing colours and getting to understand how to achieve different shades. This time we were working on opposite colours and created an umbrella project to reflect on how to use opposite colours in art for creating a shadow of an object in particular colour scheme.

Opposite colours which are also known as complementary colours are those which are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel, for example, red and green or purple and yellow. We played with this concept and created an umbrella project which represents a range of colours from yellow to red-violet on the umbrella and from yellow-green to violet representing a shadow of this umbrella on the sand. I was so happy to see a clear understanding of this idea. We used crayons, markers, and our professional colour wheel. The children were able to identify colours and then worked on the background as per their idea to complete the picture. On a more advanced level, I would add another project, for example, a watercolour painting of a room full of furniture. The furniture would be in a yellow to the red-violet colour scheme and all the shadows would be in yellow-green to the violet scheme. I hope you can imagine it and if you would like me to paint it and share with you, its no problem, you can just send me an e-mail or even a text message and I will happily prepare it for you. Opposite colours are great to play with and the results may be truly artistic.