Red, White and Cyan?

Today, we celebrate Independence Day in the United States.  Most people probably are setting off fireworks to help celebrate our freedom but I decided to paint a red onion in watercolors:

After all, my onion has the color of red, the paper is white and the shading is grayish blue!  😉

In my search to learn more about this veggie (that will likely be sliced and added to a burger by many celebrating this holiday today); I discovered that the red color on this onion comes from anthocyanidins such as cyanidin.  Don’t worry, this is a good thing! As it can help protect our bodies from oxidative damage and reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancer.  This red pigment is found in many red berries, apples, plums and red cabbage.  Did you know that red onions also contain plenty of vitamins and minerals, including folate, thiamine, calcium, magnesium, potassium, manganese and vitamins C, K and B-6!

Cyanidin got to thinking that there was a color called, cyan.  According to Wikipedia, “The CMYK color model (process color, four color) is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black).  When CMY “primaries” are combined at full strength, the resulting “secondary” mixtures are red, green and blue. Mixing all three gives black.”

Cyan is actually greenish-blue or light blue color.  On a color wheel, it would be located between blue and green, making it a complementary color of red.

I found this all rather fascinating and I hope you do too!  🙂

I decided my onion painting needed a little “sweetening” so I added a few color pencils to finish it:

I did find that painting an onion in watercolor is similar to peeling one…both have a lot of layers!  Lol!

Happy Painting and Celebrating!  🙂