Painting the Colour Wheel
Let’s talk about colour wheels!
When was the last time you painted the colour wheel? Primary school? You wouldn’t be alone if you answered yes to that. It’s funny how incredible a tool the colour wheel can be for artists but so many people haven’t given it any thought since third grade.
Let’s change that.
The Practical Goodness of a Colour Wheel
Have a colour wheel in your arsenal of tools can be extremely helpful when it comes to composing your image. It’s an easy way to see what combinations would be the most contrasting or similar.
When you go to the art shops, you will be able to purchase a colour wheel that is full of information about colour theory and the different names for colour pairings and combinations. Colour theory can be a beast of its own though so I won’t bog you down with those details here. I do have a e-booklet in the shop that does a deep dive into colour theory for artists that will give you everything you need to know about colour and applying it to your art.
Personally I’ve never owned one of the colour wheels from the shops and if you don’t feel like spending the extra dollars one, you don’t need to.
Creating your own colour wheel will give you an opportunity to practice three important painting skills:
colour mixing
paint application and water control
precision, or steady brush control
Easy Step by Step to Painting Your Wheel
If you’re anything like me and want to paint the “perfect” colour wheel, I’ve got some easy tricks to avoid doing any math for those evenly spaced slices.
Draw/trace a circle
Divide your circle into halves, horizontal and vertical, to create quarters
Now further divide each quarter into 3 slices using 2 diagonal lines to create a total of 12 slices
I suggest 12 slices or sections is so you can include:
Primary Colours:
Red, Blue, Yellow
Secondary Colours:
Green, Orange, Purple
Tertiary Colours:
Yellow-green, Blue-green, Red-orange, Yellow-orange, Red-purple, Blue-purple
You can even take it one step further and include tints and shades to your colour wheel (pictured above). I did this by adding two more inner rings to create little sections for a tint and shade per colour.
Tint: a hue mixed with white
Shade: a hue mixed with black
As you can see, you don’t have to create colour wheels as actual wheels. I got creative with this second iteration of a colour wheel and played with the different shapes. The whole point of painting your own colour wheel is to use it as a skills exercise and compositional tool.
Happy painting my friend!
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