experimentation - complementary colors

This week I decided to look at adding colors and how would complementary colors work on my design. Since my project is based on the theme Purple Haze, I thought of adding a lot of yellow to balance out the purple. 

To start with this exercise I decided to look at a sketch of a character, I have created before for this project. It is a rough sketch of a mom. 

I have tried to copy this sketch which actually became a very difficult task. I have created a similar sketch though and started adding color. I decided to use watercolors for this experiment and it was generally difficult. It was messy and the water would get everywhere which caused some of the colors to mix. I was generally a little bit scared of using the yellow and purple colors because they have a very strong contrast. They not only are complementary colors, but also there is a contrast caused by the dark / light aspect. I think it causes the colors to appear as stronger than the design. 

Here is how the exercise turned out. 

As I expected, the colors are a little too vibrant and they truly 'jump' at the viewer. Even though these are complementary colors, I feel the design is too chaotic. I think I would be able to fix this by making the colors less vibrant, adding gray to them , making them almost pastel like. I think they would turn out a lot more eye-pleasing. I think it would be a good idea. I am going to finalize this digitally, however I thought practicing with actual paint is better for mixing the colors and experimenting.