Here's how to decipher a color wheel. Hey everyone, it's Ashley from Art Summits, and today I just wanted to break down the myriad different items that are on these color wheels. So you may have seen these little paper color wheels before.
They come in different sizes. This one's pretty small. But they've got a couple of different sliders on either side, and while everything is actually written on here... It's pretty tiny to read and a lot of times if you're new to color theory or watercolor painting in general, it helps just to have somebody kind of walk you through the basics of how a color wheel like this works. So let's start on this side here, the one that has these little red, yellow, and blue things on the slider.
We're not going to start on this side, so I wanted to show you first what we have around. The outside border are all of our different primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Now if you remember from grade school, probably, you remember primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. And so we have red, yellow, and blue over here.
And then in between, halfway between each primary color is what's called the secondary color. So in the case of red and yellow, halfway between that is orange. In the case of yellow and blue primaries, we have a green secondary.
And in between blue and red primaries, we have violet or purple. Now, in between the primaries and the secondaries, we have what are called tertiary colors. And those are what we get when we mix a primary and a secondary.
So if we take the primary color blue and we mix it with the secondary color green, we would get a bluish green. And same thing here, if we mixed the primary color yellow with the secondary color green, we would get a yellow-green. And so that's what the border of this side of the color wheel is comprised of, is three primaries, three secondaries, and six tertiary colors.
So that's what's on the border. Now let's look at this little slider. So it has these little windows here, and you'll notice that When I turn it, I can say if I move, if I look at yellow as my main color here, and I put the red slider in line with that yellow, what this tells me is the resulting color right here, when I mix yellow and red, I would get some kind of orange. Now keep in mind that this is kind of rudimentary and it depends on the type of yellow and the type of red that you mix. That will determine the type of orange that you get, but this is just kind of like a basic understanding of how the colors work in general.
So if I were to, say, add red to blue, I would get basically what they call violet, which is the same color. This is the same color as right here. So that's how these little windows work right here. We can do the same thing with yellow. So if we match up the blue and the yellow, it's going to tell us that'll make a green.
If we match up... Blue with the yellow just doing the opposite we get the same thing green and then we also have some additional variations here like if we were to add white and If we were to add black and so that in theory kind of tells you what colors you would get Like if you were to add white to a red so you match up the red with this white on the inner Circle then you would get pink. So that's how those Colors work on this side.
You can see also we've got some definitions here. We've got the primary colors, secondary, and tertiary colors, which we already talked about. There's also warm colors and cool colors. And so on this color wheel they define warm colors as reds, oranges, and yellows. So basically this side, which you can see right here.
Also these tiny little letters that say warm colors are pretty much all along here. And then From here, this is where they start saying they're cool colors. So from here to here are the cool colors, and from here to here are the warm colors.
Now keep in mind that is a general train of thought, and each color does have a warm or a cool bias to it. So if color is something that has really confused you, especially when it comes to color mixing with paints, then I definitely urge you to check out my color mixing class Stop Making Mud. We'll put a link in the description below.
So now let's flip this over to the other side. This is where we get into different color relationships and this is where a color wheel can help you kind of mix and match colors that will look good together depending on the look that you're going for. So that again...
And that's like a whole separate topic, but just to show you how this works, we have a little pointer here that says pure color, and so that's where you would point to, say, for green. Say that's the color that we're interested in. And what's in this little circle in the center shows us how green is related to other colors and what those relationships are called. So if we were to follow this thick black arrow directly across from green, Over to red.
This is what is called a complementary color. These are opposites on the color wheel. Mix these together and you tend to get a gray or a neutral color, so they neutralize each other. You can do the same thing, for instance, with blue. Now blue, if you follow that dark line, again over to its complementary, its complementary is orange.
So that's one type of color relationship is complementary colors. you could also do split complementary, which is almost the same as complementary, but instead of using this one that is directly opposite of your main color, we're going to go one step in either direction from that main color. So if you were to do a split complementary palette with blue, you would use a yellow-orange and a red-orange, and that would be considered a split complementary palette. You can also do a triad, which is basically following this triangle here. So we'd have blue, yellow, and red, which are our primary colors.
If we switch this, say, to green, our triad would be green, orange, and violet, or purple, which are our secondary colors. So there's a couple more on here also. Tetrad, which is basically four colors, which are two complementary colors. You look at the corners of this square here, and we'd have violet, red, yellow, and green.
And so those are two sets of opposite colors, or complementary colors. Yellow and purple, green and red, and those four colors make up a tetrad. Now the other cool thing about this side of the color wheel is that you'll notice here we have these little windows where we have a tint, a tone, and a shade. And so a tint is just adding white to the pure color, and so that just lightens it.
A tone is adding gray to the color, which neutralizes it a little bit, and then a shade is adding black to that color, which makes it darker. So you can see if we were to look at red, for instance, when we add white to it, in other words when we make it, when we tint it or make it a tint, it becomes pink like we saw on the other side. And when we add gray, it makes it a little bit more of a neutral brownish color.
When we add black, as in creating a shade, then it just kind of darkens that red and makes it less bright, less saturated. Some other color relationships on this color wheel that we didn't talk about yet are monochromatic. They're listed here on the side.
So this is just using one color and then mixing either tints, tones, or shades of it. So you're just lightening it and using just that one pure color though. Analogous is where you are using like two to four colors that are kind of along the same side of the color wheel. So like using all four of these colors, yellow, yellow-green, green, and blue-green, make a nice, would make a nice color palette.
Same thing over here, if you were to use like some warmer colors, red-orange, orange-yellow, orange-and-yellow, make a nice soothing palette. And then Complementer we talked about as well. So you can see all of these things are listed here, and Once you have a little bit of familiarity with it and somebody kind of walks you through it, then you can always fall back on these notes to kind of help remind you what all of these different things are.
So yes, there's a lot of information on this color wheel, but it is really helpful as a reference. Another thing I want to mention, just one last thing that a lot of people forget to talk about, is the grayscale that's on here on the front side. And so In this grayscale, we have 10 different values, which are just the lightness and darkness of a color.
And we have all the way from 100% black to 100% white, and all these different shades of gray in between. And so that's really helpful if you're doing a painting and you're trying to make sure that it's not too flat, and that it has a good range of values in it. You can use this grayscale to try and help you figure out... if most of your colors are kind of falling into this lightness range, and if so, then you may want to add some darker versions of those colors to get you into darker values. So that is a very brief guide to getting to know a pocket color wheel.
I hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. Thanks so much for watching, and I will see you next time.