The color wheel is the visible spectrum of colors encased in a circle and it is a very useful tool which helps explain what happens when we mix our paints together.
We talked about the color wheel essentially the RYB color wheel or the artist’s color wheel in the last blog if you haven’t checked it out yet. Click here.
We will only talk about the most common RYB color wheel with basic color Red, Yellow and Blue.
Let’s see what the different groups of colors are in the color wheel.
The Primary Colors - In theory, these are the colors that we can mix with other colors in the visible spectrum.
In art, the three primary colors are considered to be red, blue and yellow.
When you mix all three primary colors together, you get mud or a dark gray color.
Secondary Colors - When we mix two primary colors together we get secondary colors.
These colors are Green, Orange and Purple.
Tertiary Colors - When we mix a primary color with a secondary color we get a tertiary color.
Complementary Colors- Colors which are opposite to each other on the color wheel are known as complementary colors.
There is a distinct contrast between two complementary colors when placed together.
For example, yellow and purple.
Tints- White is what you get when all the colors of light are combined (our paints do not work that way, we rather get a mud color on mixing all colors)
When you add white to your colors, you make the colors lighter, these lighter colors are known as tints.
Shades: Black on the other hand, is the absence of color.
When you add black to your colors, you decrease make the color darker, these darker colors are what we know as shades.
When you add white or black to a color, you reduce the saturation of the color.
So although white and black cannot be seen on the color wheel, they do have the power to alter the value and saturation of the colors.