Color Theory

The 12 part color wheel is based on the three primary colors (Red, Yellow and Blue) placed evenly around a circle.

Between the three primaries are the secondary colors (Green, Orange and Violet) which are mixtures of the two primaries they sit between.

The tertiary colors fall between each primary and secondary. Between yellow and orange, for example, is yellow orange, between blue and violet is blue violet and so on.

All these colors around the outside of the color wheel are called saturated colors. They contain no black, no white and none of their complimentary or opposite color.

Note: Some books will refer to tertiary colors as a mixture of the three primaries and only break the color wheel into six colors (primaries and secondaries). I prefer the theory based on Johannes Itten's 12 part color wheel, as it offers a much better understanding of the interaction of colors.

Compound colors are colors containing a mixture of the three primaries. All the browns, khakis and earth colors are compound colors.

In order to mix pigments into clean saturated colors it is necessary to include a warm and cool of each of the primaries in your palette. There is no such thing as a pure primary pigment, so when mixing green for example, choosing a cool blue such as phthalo and a cool yellow such as lemon ensures there is no trace of red in the green. Using a warm yellow like cadmium or a warm blue such as ultramarine would introduce a slight trace of red into the green resulting in a compound color.

Tints are made by adding white to a color. Shades are made by adding black.

Imagine a color wheel filled in with all the compound mixtures between all the complementary colors. If this color wheel is placed in the middle of a cylinder with progressively darker shades of all those colors below and progressively lighter tints above, the cylinder would contain every possible color!

USING COMPOUND COLORS

Compound colors are all the earth colors, browns, ochres etc. They contain a mixture of all three primaries.

A helpful technique when working with watercolor is to begin working with compound colors and slowly work towards more saturated colors. This allows for much greater control over color harmony and gives the more saturated colors greater impact.

Saturated cool red lies somewhere between red and violet on the color wheel and contains no yellow. The compound mixtures contain increasing amounts of yellow as they move further away from the saturated color.

Sources:  John Lovett and Studio Chalkboard

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