The Color Wheel

​If you ever paid any attention to the color wheel you should have noticed by now that the colors in it are not random, in fact they are organized by the relationship to the color next to it, and that is not by accident either.

​Sir Isaac Newton

​In the 1660s, English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, due to the bubonic plague, began a series of experiments with sunlight and prisms. He demonstrated that clear white light was composed of seven visible colors. ROY G BIV. He then organized the colors in order of relevance, creating the color wheel as we have today. 

​Primary Colors

In the world of art, Red, Yellow and Blue are considered the primary colors, meaning that they can not be mixed using other colors, however, by mixing 2 primary color you will get what is called secondary colors. 

​Secondary Colors

​Secondary colors are the colors you get when you mix 2 primary colors together. For example:

Y + B = Green

B + R = Purple or Violet

R + Y = Orange

​The tertiary colors are a mix of 1 primary color and 1 secondary color. For example:

G + B = Teal

B + P = Indigo

P + R = Maroon 

R + O = Scarlet

O + Y = Saffron

Y + G = Chartrouse

Color Harmony

There are 3 main ‘qualities’ of the color wheel

​HUE

​The first is the HUE. This is simply the color position around the wheel – and the brightest, purest version of each color. Our wheel uses 12 main colors, but we can also work with all of the hues in between.

VALUE

​Then, we have VALUE. This tells us how dark or light a color is. We can create SHADES of our color by adding black, or  TINTS of our color by adding white. We can also add TONE by adding grey.

TEMPERATURE

​The color wheel can be split into 2 main groups – warm colors and cool colors. But individual colors can also change in temperature as we move around our wheel. A warm red includes more yellow, and a cool red includes more blue.

Assignment

CREATE YOUR OWN COLOR WHEEL​

• On a piece of paper, create a circle for the color wheel, divide it into 12 spaces.

• First color your in primary colors

• Second, color in your secondary colors

• Last color in your tertiary color