In response to my blogpost dated 1 May of this year I received the following comment:
Hello Ben
A beautiful portrait, but I do not understand the remark about the red face and green background. I would think that the effect is thereby enhanced. Greetings”
Yvonne Welman
This observation is of course correct. Indeed, the green enhances the reddish effect. Green against red is a complementary contrast. Well, I have altered the background of the original painting in photoshop. In this changed version red is now the dominant colour overall. The whole painting is thus getting a huge saturation of the red tones. I did not want that. That is what I meant when I wrote “To minimize the impact of the reddish face I surrounded it with a greenish background.” (By all means, in the original painting, I had already introduced some red accents in the background, as an echo of the reddish flesh tones, at the left of the face.)