Creating a Color Wheel

One of the basic skills in creating art is understanding color. The color wheel is the most elementary way to understand colors and their relationship to one another. In this video (which is in two parts) I demonstrate how to paint with watercolors and explain the relationship between colors. Here's a few simple rules to creating your own color wheel.

1) Start with true red, blue and yellow. In this video I used crimson, Prussian blue and lemon yellow. 

2) I used watercolors because they dry quickly but you can use gouache, acrylics or oil paints. 

3) Try to create your color wheel using only the primary colors. It's a great way to learn to blend colors and to get to know your paints. You can create one digitally but you won't have the same experience of understanding how colors blend.

4) Clean your brush well each time you mix to prevent contamination. 

5) When you set up your color wheel make sure it is mathematically even. I used a circular graph paper to create mine. Each piece of the pie for each color needs to equal in size. 

6) Start with the primary colors (red, blue, yellow), then the secondary colors (violet, green, orange) and then the tertiary colors (red violet, blue violet, yellow green etc.)