The renowned physicist Isaac Newton gave us the color wheel in the 1600s.

He was famous for explaining gravity, but he also devised the theory of light and color.

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

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

Today's color wheel is based on twelve colors.

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

what are the primary colors?

Today artists use the primary color wheel based on the three primary colors yellow, red and blue.

• The paint colors closest to the primary colors are Lemon Yellow, Permanent Rose and Thalo Blue.

All other colors can be mixed from these three primary colors.

the secondary colors

When we mix two of the primary colors together, we get a secondary color.

Mix yellow and red and you get orange.

Yellow and blue mixed together make green.

A mixture of blue and red make purple, also called violet.

what are tertiary colors?

When we mix a primary color with a secondary color, we get the intermediate colors called tertiary colors.

For example, the primary color yellow mixed with the secondary green gives us yellow-green.

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

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

warm and cool colors

The color wheel contains warm colors and cool colors.

Red, orange and yellow are considered warm colors.

The warm colors appear to advance forward in the painting.

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

Cool colors appear to recede into the distance.

• Paint the part of an object that comes toward the viewer with warm colors.

• Paint the parts of an object that turn away from the viewer with cooler colors.

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

But you 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. So red is the coolest.

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

Use the color wheel to select the colors for your paint palette.

We use it to choose color schemes for individual paintings.

We use it for mixing colors while we are painting.

Color gives life to our paintings.

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