In Living Color 14 - Color Wheel

In the next class we spent most of our time learning about colors and their characteristics.  We first started out making our own color wheel, so to speak, using the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue or whatever we had that was close.  Next we mixed one of the colors with the color next to it and came up with the three secondary colors of orange, green and purple.

Color Wheel

After the color wheel we learned how to mix browns using the primary color complements.  Each color has its complement which is the color directly across from it on the color wheel.  Depending on how much of each color you use a different shade of brown can be achieved.  I must have used to much orange in the orange/blue mix since it doesn't seem to be very brown in my opinion.  We also learned how to achieve gray and black tones by mixing the three primary colors as seen in the bottom circle.  The heavier the mix the darker the color.

Browns & Blacks

Next came greens.  With this exercise we chose four different shades of blue and made two rows of each color on the paper.  To each blue color in the first row we mixed Cad Yellow with it to see what shade of green was produced.  Then with the second row we mixed Raw Sienna and came up with four more shades of green sorta.  All in all it was a fun exercise and helpful for future use.

Greens

Another project that I did in the comfort of my home was to make a color ring of all the colors I had in my pallett so I could easily pick and choose the colors I wanted to use in a painting.  Rather than making a large sheet showing the different shades from darkest through lightest I just did two values dark and light for each color on a small piece of watercolor paper and wrote the color and the manufacture on the card.  It's rather like going to the paint store and choosing a paint color.  And speaking of paint samples, I've read where some atrists use paint sample cards in the same way when deciding what colors to use in their paintings.

My color Ring