Thursday, October 21, 2010

Color Theory - The Basics of Color Theory

Color theory provides a set of guidelines on how to create the colors you find on the color wheel and any other color in general.
There are three primary colors. They are red, yellow, and blue. They are called primaries because they cannot be created using other colors. From these three colors, the other colors are born.

To see examples of color wheels that I created, click here!

The primary colors create the secondary colors orange, green, and violet.

Red and yellow = orange
Blue and yellow = green
Blue and red = violet.



The tertiary colors are made by blending the primary colors with the secondary colors. So we have:

Red and orange = red-orange
Red and violet = red-violet
Yellow and green = yellow-green
Yellow and orange = yellow orange
Blue and green = blue-green
Blue and violet = blue-violet.

Each primary color has two secondary colors. Just for fun, noticed how there is no blue-orange, red-green, or yellow-violet. The tertiaries are formed based on the primary and seconday colors that are closest to each other.

Another thing to keep in mind is that each tertiary color contain all the primary colors red, yellow, blue.

You can have fun creating your own color wheels using acrylic paints. You can get Liquitex Basics Acrylic Paints- Set of 36 Colors for a good price at amazon.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Say Something!