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The
12 step Color Wheel
THis 12 step color wheel will provide
the basic information needed
to grasp most color design
challenges.
The basic principles of color
theory and design are simple. The color wheel becomes a
visual aid in helping us understand the principles of
color.
It is also an excellent tool to help create
harmonious color schemes for painting, interior
decorating, and commercial design. It creates an orderly
progression of color that helps us understand color
balance and harmony.
Our color wheel starts with the 3 primary colors, placed in an equilateral triangle.
The next aspect to the color wheel
is creating the secondary colors. These colors are
placed in triangles above the corresponding primary
color combination. This system of color mixing is known
as the subtractive
process, because the resulting secondary color
subtracts or absorbs even more waves from the white
light than the first color did.
Secondary
or Complementary Colors: When any one primary color
is mixed with another a secondary color effect is
produced. 3 secondary colors are produced from the
mixing of one primary color with another.
The secondary colors are:
- orange (mix red + yellow)
- green (mix yellow + blue)
- violet (mix blue + red)
These secondary colors are also
known as complementary colors.
The final step to creating the 12
step color wheel will be to create a ring around the
newly formed primary and secondary color form. Divided
into 12 equal segments, the primary and secondary colors
shall be repeated to their corresponding segment within
the surrounding ring. This will leave a blank segment
between every two colors. In these blank segments the tertiary
colors will be created.
Tertiary Colors: These
colors are created when mixing one
secondary and one primary color. i.e. blue + violet =
blueviolet. Three or more separate colors are mixed (one
primary and one secondary – the combination of two
primaries), and in our color wheel each tertiary color
being created will be an equal combination of the two
colors, left and right, surrounding an open segment.
The tertiary colors are: yellow-orange, red-orange,
red-violet, blue violet, blue-green, and yellow-green.
The sequence of colors on the color
wheel should resemble that of the rainbow.
We
can now use our color wheel as the basis to
understanding color and color combination techniques.
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