the artist color wheel is the artist's favorite tool for creating beautiful art

Artists master color using the artist color wheel. Color is wonderful!

Understanding color gives the artist a great advantage in our painting skills. We use the knowledge of color to create beautiful paintings.

Color is a beautiful gift from God that brings joy to our lives.

Imagine if, we went through our lives like in a black and white movie. I can't and I am so glad for all the colors around us.

The artist color wheel: our tool for creative painting

The Color Wheel

What exactly is the color wheel?

The renowned physicist Isaac Newton was famous for explaining gravity, but he also devised the theory of light and color. He gave us the color wheel back in the 1600s.

He noticed when light goes through a prism, it is divided into rainbow colors.

The seven rainbow colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple.

Artists have been using the knowledge of the color wheel to improve their paintings ever since.

Today the artist color wheel uses twelve colors. It excludes indigo and uses the other six rainbow colors.

What exactly is color?

Color is the artist's wonderful tool for self-expression.

When light shines on an object, some of the light rays bounce back, off the object. The rays that don't bounce back are absorbed by the object.

The light rays that bounce up off an object are its color. We see the rays as the color of the object. For example, a green object bounces green light rays and absorbs the other colors.

Dark objects absorb most of the light rays. That's why they look dark because almost no rays are bouncing back.

Color is just plain fun!

The wise artist uses color to express different emotions in their paintings. Warm colors generally create good feelings and cool colors feel calm and peaceful.

Red is an exception to this generality. Red is considered the romantic love color. That's why men give their ladies red roses. But red may also portray anger or rage.

Orange is an energetic color that implies haste or impulse.

Yellow is a happy, sunshine color. It may also be seen as a warning, like in our caution traffic lights. Also, cowards are called yellow.

Green is associated with the out-of-doors and nature. It certainly has a strong tie to money. Sometimes people may be called green with envy.

Blue is a peaceful, calm color that reminds us of the sky and water. It stimulates trust and loyalty.

Purple or violet has long been associated with royalty and elegance. It may also be used to portray courage.

How artists use colors in our paintings.

the primary colors

The twelve colors of the artist color wheel are based on yellow, red and blue, the primary colors.

Primary Colors

The paint colors closest to the primaries are:

• Cadmium Yellow Light
• Permanent Rose
• Phthalo Blue

All other colors are variations or mixtures of the three primary colors.

Phthalo Blue is a very strong blue. Consequently, it is not recommended for beginning artists.

A primary palette for learning to mix colors would be: Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red and Ultramarine Blue.

You can learn how to mix paint colors.

mixing secondary colors

Secondary Colors

Secondary colors are the result of mixing two primaries together. When we mix yellow and red together, we get orange.

Yellow and blue mixed together make green.

By mixing blue and red we get purple, it may also be called violet.

The secondary colors can have some variation. It depends on exactly which yellow, red or blue were used for the mixing.

For example: We can get different greens by using various blue colors.

Mixing Phthalo Blue and yellow makes bright greens. Ultramarine Blue and yellow create more subdued greens. That's because Ultramarine contains a little bit of red that tones down the green.

what are tertiary colors?

Tertiary Colors

Intermediate colors are called tertiaries. We get them by mixing a primary color with a secondary color next to it on the artist color wheel.

For example, mixing primary yellow with the secondary color green results in a yellow-green.

Different amounts of yellow or green will give us many variations of the yellow-green.

If we go to the other side of yellow and mix it with the secondary color orange, we get yellow-orange.

The tertiary colors are; yellow-green, yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet and blue-green.

Learn more about the Color Wheel from Wikipedia

how artists use color in paintings

Artists often use their knowledge of the color wheel, while they are painting.

color temperature

You may often hear artists talking about color temperature, warm and cool colors. What are they?

The artist color wheel contains warm colors and cool colors.

Red, orange and yellow are considered warm colors.

When warm colors are used in a painting, they appear to advance forward in the painting.

Blue, green and sometimes violet are usually considered cool colors.

Basically, any color containing blue is considered cool.

When cool colors are used in a painting, they seem to recede into the distance.

forming mangoes with color

Glazing with watercolor

1. Warm colors advance, so we paint the part of an object that is closer to the viewer with warmer colors.
   
2. Cool colors recede so we paint the parts of an object turning away from the viewer with cooler colors.

Cooler and darker colors on the edge of the mangoes show them turning away from our view.

If the edge has bright light shining on it, we won't paint it darker. But we would still paint it cooler to show it turning away.

But you may say, yellow, orange and red are all warm colors. You are correct.

Yellow is the warmest color. The less yellow in a color, the cooler it gets.

Because orange contains less yellow, it is cooler than primary yellow. Red is a warm color, but it is cooler than orange and much cooler than yellow.

create distance in our paintings

How do we paint the illusion of distance and depth on our two-dimensional painting surface?

First, we need to understand aerial perspective. Colors get lighter and cooler, when they are viewed from the distance. This is because particles of dust and moisture in the air block the view of things, so they look lighter. This phenomenon is called aerial or atmospheric perspective.

Yellow, our warmest color starts disappearing in the distance and cool blue takes over.

How do we paint aerial perspective?

• Paint less saturated, lighter colors in the distance.
• We use cooler colors (bluer) in the distant parts of a painting to make them recede.
• Warmer colors in the foreground portions of the painting make them look closer.

"Springtime" is a prophetic painting.

The painting above used three things to give the illusion of distance.

1. The distant mountain colors are less saturated, lighter.
   
2. Additional blue simulated aerial perspective and moved the mountains into the distance.
3. The colors in the foreground are much warmer and saturated to bring them forward.
   

selecting colors for our palette

We refer to the color wheel to decide which colors to keep on hand.

Beginners learn to paint with a limited palette of the primary colors; Cadmium Yellow Light, Cadmium Red Medium or Permanent Rose, Ultramarine Blue and white.

Paint a colorful fish with a limited palette.

An expanded palette of a warm and cool version of each primary makes it easier to mix colors.

A full color palette would include a warm and cool version of each of the six basic colors of the artist color wheel; yellow, orange, red, violet, blue and green.

There is no need for black on our palette. It's easy to mix black, brown and grey.

the color wheel is a super tool for artists!