Colour wheels play a big part in art. The wheel itself is made up of six basic colours. The first side contains red, orange and yellow, and the second side, blue, violet and green. The first set of colors have a warmth to them and seem to come to meet you, with the second set moving backwards, with a cool feel to them.
This is very useful, say, if you are doing trees in a landscape picture. If you use blue and green for the distant trees it would make them look as if they are receding. Now, colours which are into opposition to each, otherwise known as complementary colours.
This can be used to great effect to create strong colouring which is vibrant and a good contrast to your pictures.
Something to remember is the light reflects everything we see in colour around us. To the average person they probably see, say, brown as brown, red as red, but it does not have to be like this.
We are surrounded by examples. Water and all the different tones of blues and greens we see in it, the same can be said about the sky, sunsets etc. All this is dependant on the light.
If the sun passes through raindrops the spectrum appears. Looking at these colours, if you make a ring with these, you have a colour wheel. Which brings us to colour mixing!
Red, yellow and blue cannot be produced fom any other colour in the wheel for these, the primary colours, are pure. Secondary colours are made by a level mixture of the two primary colour neighbours from the circle, these being the orange, green and violet.
To take this one step further, you can mix the secondary colours with any of the three primary colours. Turquoise being what occurs if you mix blue with green. If you look at the colour labels on paints, it seems the names seem to stem from precious stones and plants.
As you may have come to the realisation, the wheel does not include black and white. In essence, when the light shines on to something it soaks up part of its wavelengths, this results in some coming back to make up the colour we are seeing.
With the colour black it soaks them all up and white bounces them all back. Therefore black is a missing colour and white is all the colours made into one.
How about trying to see how many shades of brown you can make just from different mixes of the primary colours?
Colour quite obviously plays a very important part for artists. It is amazing, you can create atmosphere, emotions, excite, present illusions of realism and even control space. They can also be transparent, opaque, translucent, textured, flat, matt, gloss, dull or vibrant.
This is very useful, say, if you are doing trees in a landscape picture. If you use blue and green for the distant trees it would make them look as if they are receding. Now, colours which are into opposition to each, otherwise known as complementary colours.
This can be used to great effect to create strong colouring which is vibrant and a good contrast to your pictures.
Something to remember is the light reflects everything we see in colour around us. To the average person they probably see, say, brown as brown, red as red, but it does not have to be like this.
We are surrounded by examples. Water and all the different tones of blues and greens we see in it, the same can be said about the sky, sunsets etc. All this is dependant on the light.
If the sun passes through raindrops the spectrum appears. Looking at these colours, if you make a ring with these, you have a colour wheel. Which brings us to colour mixing!
Red, yellow and blue cannot be produced fom any other colour in the wheel for these, the primary colours, are pure. Secondary colours are made by a level mixture of the two primary colour neighbours from the circle, these being the orange, green and violet.
To take this one step further, you can mix the secondary colours with any of the three primary colours. Turquoise being what occurs if you mix blue with green. If you look at the colour labels on paints, it seems the names seem to stem from precious stones and plants.
As you may have come to the realisation, the wheel does not include black and white. In essence, when the light shines on to something it soaks up part of its wavelengths, this results in some coming back to make up the colour we are seeing.
With the colour black it soaks them all up and white bounces them all back. Therefore black is a missing colour and white is all the colours made into one.
How about trying to see how many shades of brown you can make just from different mixes of the primary colours?
Colour quite obviously plays a very important part for artists. It is amazing, you can create atmosphere, emotions, excite, present illusions of realism and even control space. They can also be transparent, opaque, translucent, textured, flat, matt, gloss, dull or vibrant.
About the Author:
If you liked this guide by Anna Meenaghan then you can find a great lot more at her internet based interactive art gallery website. There you can discover anything related to art ranging from realism to abstract paintings, as well as interviews with guest artists etc.
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