Project Description

Color Mixing project to develop an understanding of color attributes and palettes, terminology, Paint application techniques, and sensitivity to Color Contrasts and Progressions (gradation) in creative designs.

Project Overview

Problem: Create a Color Wheel that represents exact primary, secondary, & tertiary colors.

Materials: Sketchbook, pencils, Bristol Board 11″ x 14″, colored pencils, acrylic paints, brushes, palette, rags, water container, scissors, exacto knife, ruler/t-square, glue/adhesive.

Concepts: Hue, Saturation, Pure/Prismatic Color, Muted Color, Desaturated/Chromatic Gray, Achromatic Gray, Luminosity, Primary Colors, Secondary Colors, Complementary Colors, Warm, Cool, CMY, RGB, RYB color models/systems.

Technical Skills: painting techniques, draughtsmanship with ruler/t-square, & exacto knife

Outcomes:

  • Ability to recognize and define major color properties: hue, value and saturation (chroma)
  • Ability to see individual hue in terms of it’s value and saturation, in relation to other hues.
  • Recognition of Temperature in color palettes. Use Nature and memory as inspiration to guide you.
  • Ability to determine and utilize color palettes: monochrome, analogous, warm/cool, complimentary, triads (primary, secondary)  etc. using CMYK and RGB systems
  • Comfortable with paint mixing, paint application, formatting pages, and using rulers and tape for edges.

1. Discover

Color Wheel
  • Primary Colors, Secondary Colors, and Tertiary Colors
Color Wheel Definitions
  • RGB lights combine to make white & CMYK inks combine to create black.
rgb & cmyk
rgbcmyk wheel

2. Define

  • Color Wheel: A visual spectrum of colors that represents their relationship to one another. It has green categories as listed below
    • Primary Colors: Red, Blue, Yellow
    • Secondary Colors: Orange, Green, Purple
    • Tertiary Colors: Amber, Magenta, Violet, Teal, Chartreuse, & Vermilion

3. Develop

  • On Bristol Paper 11″ x 14″; Create inter section on paper and create 16 Squares. Only 4 Sqaures are 1.5″ x 1.5″ squares. All other squares are 1″ x 1″ square.   Please take a look at the color wheel image below as an example.
Color Wheel Measurement
  • Use Gouache paint:Primary Red, Primary Yellow, and Primary Blue
    • For Primary Colors: Paint primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) first on the color wheel
    • For Secondary Colors: Mix red + blue = purple, yellow + blue = green, & yellow + red = orange
  • Use a Palette knife to blend several mixtures before painting onto the grid.
Primary & Secondary Colors

Ruler measurements with decimals and fractions.

Ruler
  • Use Gouache paint: Primary Red, Primary Yellow, and Primary Blue
    • For Tertiary Colors: Mix Primary and Secondary colors;
      • Mix yellow + orange, orange + red
      • Mix red + purple, purple + blue
      • Mix blue + green, yellow + green
  • Use a Palette knife to blend several mixtures before painting onto the grid.