Roy G. Biv, you ask? He’s the anagram for the color wheel: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet!
Throughout the tutorials on this site we do refer to colors, color terminology, and the color wheel, so it seems worthy to take a few moments and define these terms. We will be working with paint colors for this quick look at the color wheel.
Working with colors can seem confusing especially when those colors fall into the different categories of light, color, and paint. Each color wheel, those for light, color, and paint, have specific properties. Here we will be working with paint colors … so our color wheel is an RYB wheel not the CMYK wheel for printing and computers or the CMY wheel of light.
Some basics to paint color:
Cadmium Red Medium, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Ultramarine Blue
My paint kit does contain pre-mixed secondary colors: Cadmium Orange Hue, Cadmium Verde Green (Permanent Green), Dioxazine Purple
Yellow + Blue = Green
Blue + Red = Purple
By beginning to add the secondary colors your palette is greatly increased and the color range you are using is more realistic.A little artist’s trick is used in this design to intensive the secondary colors … the one primary color in the quilt is blue. The blue is used in a repeating pattern, the pale blue squares with the fine pink flower. The background behind the quilt is also blue, just a slightly deeper tone than the quilt squares. By repeating the blue in the squares you eye believes they are part of the background and you therefore notice the orange and green squares as dominate.
Since Red + Yellow = Orange this can also be written as
(1/2 Red + 1/2 Yellow) + Red = Red Orange
or 1 1/2 parts Red + 1/2 part Yellow = Red Orange
This Golden Retriever pup sits in front of a quilt filled with an entire range of colors created from mixing red and blue. The colors available has become unlimited to the artist.
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