The colour wheel

There are several versions of a colour wheel or a colour circle. However, the essence is always one. The colour wheel shows how hues should or should not be combined.

Perhaps, the most popular version is the Johannes Itten’s colour wheel which consists of 12 cells. In the centre there are three highlighted main colours: blue, red and yellow. Each pair of main colours creates additional colours: orange, violet, green.

The Newton’s disc is divided into seven sectors by analogy to musical stave. Isaac Newton considered that in nature there exists only white colour which is split into 7 components (red, orange, yellow, green, light-blue, blue and violet).

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe built his own colour wheel on the basis of a theory that in nature there are 8 colours, three of which are impossible to get by mixing other hues (the primary colours of red, blue and yellow). All other shades can be obtained by blending.

All above-mentioned colour-circles have a distinct structure and borders. Unlike the Ostwald’s colour system, the author of which did not divide the circle by segments visually. He considered that colours smoothly segue and blur into each other. Ostwald’s circle is based on three colours: red, blue and green.

Each hue on this colour wheel may have a different degree of saturation. A wonderful exercise for developing colour perception is creating colour gradients from light to dark and vice versa. Gradient is a certain kind of gradation of the colour intensity or saturation.

The colour wheel

How to work with the colour wheel?

Basically we distinguish three colours which are impossible to obtain by mixing: red, blue and yellow. Such colours are called the basic ones.

Secondary colours are obtained by mixing the primary ones: yellow and red produce orange, yellow and blue produce green, red and blue produce violet. Tertiary colours are obtained by combining primary and secondary colours.

In this way it becomes obvious that the colour wheel is indispensable for budding artists when it comes to mixing colours on a palette. However, a colour wheel also gives an opportunity to combine colours in one’s wardrobe, work with contrasts and create harmonious colour combinations in the interior.

There are several variants of harmonious combination of colours:

  • A complementary colour harmony is based on two colours located opposite each other in a colour circle.
  • A triadic colour harmony is based on three colours that make an oblique triangle. If you have just started working with a colour wheel, choose the one where the triangle is already drawn and there is a mechanism of moving it around the circle.
  • A tetradic colour harmony is built on the use of four colours creating a square or rectangle inscribed in a colour circle.

Knowing these rules it is possible to create a colour scheme of the future picture. So in order to find your way around colours better, please come to our master-classes in oil painting or fluid art at the Lihtaryk Art Studio and try to discover your favourite combinations together with an experienced artist.

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