Creating a color wheel may not be glamorous, but it's a great way to help beginner - and even some advanced - painters step up their color understanding.
The benefits include:
- understanding the spectrum transitions
- learning to mix tertiary colors
- developing a preference for certain pigments
- later use for color scheme selection
In this post, I will only address the approaches for the creation of color wheels. Color schemes will come up in another post.
Dark to white
Here is a 12 color wheel with an acrylic base. Each inner circle approaches white, while the exterior circle is mixed with black.
Quinacridone Crimson
Cadmium red hue
Cadmium red hue & cadmium yellow hue (more red)
Cadmium red hue & cadmium yellow hue (more yellow)
Cadmium yellow hue
Cadmium green & cadmium yellow hue
Cadmium green
Thalo blue
Titanium white & cobalt blue
Ultramarine blue
Ultramarine blue & quinacridone crimson
Permanent violet dark
Tints
In the following oil based color wheel I have chosen different pigments. I always use three different blues - you simply can't capture all the sky and wave colors without them.
This time, the center goes toward gray, mixing in both mars black and titanium white with each interior circle.
Alizarine Crimson
Cadmium red hue
Cadmium red hue & cadmium orange hue
Cadmium orange hue
Cadmium yellow hue
Cadmium yellow hue & thalo green
Thalo green
Thalo blue
Cobalt blue
Ultramarine blue
Cobalt blue & cadmium red hue
Dioxazine purple
Neutrals
In the final color wheel, also oil based, the concept was to focus on the neutrals. I did this by mixing a touch of the opposite color on the wheel (what I sometimes brutishly but not strictly accurately be called its complimentary color). The result can lead to some beautifully subtle colors.
The pigments are:
Magenta (quinacridone & titanium white)
Cadmium red hue
Cadmium red hue & cadmium orange hue
Cadmium orange hue
Cadmium yellow hue
Cadmium yellow hue & thalo green
Thalo green
Thalo blue
Cobalt blue
Ultramarine blue
Cobalt blue & cadmium red hue
Dioxazine purple
In that last color wheel, notice the transition from the warm purple to cadmium yellow - I have often seen this color in the shadows of concrete structures.