Hi boys and girls! Today we're going to talk about the color wheel and how you can read the color wheel to help you remember how to mix colors. So the color wheel actually has a very important purpose for artists like yourself and it really helps you with color mixing.
So a lot of people might look at the color wheel and just think wow it's just this pretty rainbow thing. and that's it. But it actually is a tool that if you know how to read it the correct way is very, very helpful. So you have to know the correct way to read it or it doesn't really help you out.
And so the first thing you need to know before you can read the color wheel is you have to know the three most important colors. And those, if you don't know, are the primary colors. means first and these three colors are red, blue, and yellow and those colors are so important because you have to start with those colors first.
You cannot mix them. So red, yellow, and blue you cannot take any two other colors and mix those colors to create them. You have to start with them first.
They're also really important because you use those three colors to mix and create all of the other colors that you see here on the color wheel. So if you know where the three primary colors are, red, yellow, and blue, you can read the color wheel. So let's start over here with red. So I'm going to put my finger on red and yellow.
I'm going to put my other finger on yellow. And if you mix those two colors together equally, you get the... the color, do you know? You get the color orange. And so check it out.
In between red and yellow, look, I'm going to move my fingers, right in the middle, in between those two is orange, okay? So if you mix red and yellow equally, you get orange. So if you ever forget how to make orange, you can find it on a color wheel, okay? And then you can go out to the two primaries, red and yellow.
So now that just reminded me, if I ever forgot how to make orange, how to do that. Okay, so let's do that with the other. Orange is a secondary color. Okay, so you use the primaries to make the secondary colors. And there's another group of colors we're going to talk about in a second.
Okay, so let's go to red and blue. Okay, so I have my two pointer fingers, one on red, one on blue. If I mix those equally together. Do you know what you get?
Okay, so if you remembered how to use the color wheel, you would see that if you mix those two together, right in between them on the color wheel is violet. Violet is another secondary color. You can also call violet purple. Those are the same thing, just two different names for the same exact color, okay?
Okay, and then there's one more secondary color. So if I go over... here and I put my pointer finger on yellow and then one on blue.
If I mix those two primary colors together equally I'm gonna get the secondary color green. Okay, alright so we have three primary colors red blue and yellow. We have three secondary colors that's the second group of colors violet green and orange.
There is a third group of of colors. They have two different names. I'm going to tell you both of them so you've heard them both. So if you ever hear one or the other, you'll think that, you know, one of those hopefully sounds familiar to you.
Some people call this group of colors the intermediate colors. You can see that's written down here. Some people call them the tertiary colors. And the word tertiary means third because they're the third group of colors. So let's start up here.
The tertiary colors are a combination of one primary color, like yellow, for example, and one secondary color, like orange. And so they live on the color wheel in between the primary and the secondary colors. So if I look here at yellow and I look at orange and I look right in between, we have the color yellow. Orange. So it takes on even the name of both of those colors.
Okay. Now it's not called orange yellow. Okay.
And the reason for that is the primary color always comes first. because if you remember when I first started talking about the primary colors the word primary means first okay okay so we have yellow orange there are six intermediate colors okay Alright, so I'm going to go over here. Here we have the primary red and the secondary orange.
And the color that sits right in between those two is red orange. That's the tertiary color in between those two. Over here, in between red and violet is the color red violet.
Really crazy names to remember, right? I'm just kidding. It just takes on the names of the two colors on either side, okay?
Okay, let's go to these two, violet and blue. Okay, so don't get confused just because I said the secondary color first. We have the color in between violet and blue is blue-violet. Remember, the primary color is always going to come first. And you might notice, too, that there is a little hyphen, that's that like dash, in between the two parts of the color.
That X is like a link in between the two parts to let you know that we're just talking about this one color here called blue-violet. Alright, so moving on over here in between blue and green, the color blue-green. And then last one in between yellow and green is the intermediate color or tertiary color called yellow-green. Okay, so there are three primary colors, there are three secondary colors, and there are six intermediate or tertiary colors. You can use the color wheel to help you remember.
how to mix colors. You just have to remember the three primary colors and look at what's in between them to remember how to mix. One final thing I'm going to tell you, if you are trying to mix the intermediate colors, let's say you're trying to make blue green, okay, you can still read the color wheel in the same way. You look at yellow and blue are the two primary colors on either side of blue green.
What do you think you're going to add more of if you're making blue green? So you know you're making a green, which you need yellow and blue to do. But think about the name, blue green, right?
So if you're mixing yellow and blue, you're going to need more blue to make blue green. If you're trying to make yellow green, you're going to mix blue and yellow together, and you're going to add more yellow. Same thing over here. If you're mixing orange, you add equal parts red and yellow.
If you're trying to make yellow orange, you just add more yellow than red. For red orange, you add a little bit of yellow and a bunch of red. Same thing with the violets, right?
We have red violet, violet, and blue violet. So you're going to use red and blue to make violet. You're going to mix them equally.
If you want to make red violet... you're going to add more red than blue. And if you're going to make blue violet, you're going to add more blue than red. So I hope that helps you guys to understand how to read the color wheel. And so I want you to answer the questions on the Google form and see if you can use the color wheel to help you answer those questions if you don't remember how to mix certain colors.
Good luck!