Know Your Colors & Paints Part 1: The Color Wheel

In Search Of Accurate Primaries For Mixing Vivid Colors

Painting the color wheel is the best way to see for yourself the relationship between colors and how they mix with each other and what the mixes offer us. The digital diagrams and videos below can be used as guides to paint your own color wheel that you may keep in your studio and refer back to for as long as you need to.

Vocabularies and concepts to become aware of through this project:

Hue

Value

Intensity

Primary 

Secondary

Tertiary

Complementary

Shaded Hues

Neutralized/Neutralizing Hues

Additive vs. Subtractive Primaries

CMY Process Primaries vs. Older Primaries

Triads

Split Primary Color Wheel

Extended Palette Color Wheel

The CMY Color Wheel: The New & More Accurate Primaries

Objective & Introduction

In order to use color effectively, first and foremost — we need to understand the basic concepts of the correct primary colors. One of the goals for this module is to help artists, experienced and beginners alike, build a strong foundation for predictable color mixing by building clear understanding of color relationships between the three primaries that are available to us today as readymade tubes of watercolor paints.

Some of the particular colorants (pigments and dyes) available to artists today as primaries were not available even thirty years ago in the form of watercolor paints. The hues that were closer to the scientific spectrum were only available as liquid inks and printing inks in commercial art, that didn’t require to be permanent.  Due to the advancement in the paint manufacturing industry and polymer technology in particular, we are able to work with primary colors that are closer to scientifically accurate primary colors of the visible spectrum, while offering the more permanence for artists’ paints. We will explore in this module, how to identify these three primaries and learn why they are called Process Primaries.The CMY or The Process Color Wheel (digitally created sample):

Why the CMY primaries and why not the old paint primaries we were taught in childhood?

Red, Blue-purple, and Green colored–lights and Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow colored-objects or material colors are the scientifically proven primary colors in the visible spectrum. For the material color, however, while the commercial printing industry and textile dying industry for decades and even the home printers have been using the CMYK set of printing inks for a while —  the artists’ paint manufacturing industry hasn’t quite perfected the primaries to be absolutely accurate as cyan, magenta, and yellow primaries yet. And that’s because artists’ paints need to be more permanent than printed surfaces. The paint manufacturers are getting close however and so, we, as artists, need to stay informed of these new developments and take advantage of their plus points and be aware of their limitations. And that’s what we are here to explore. 

Best explained (Links to an external site.) on johnmuirlaws.com

“It turns out that if we use three primaries, the best ones to use are cyan, magenta and yellow. Note that these are the primaries that have been identified by the large printing companies who will use CMY (and often black as well) in their commercial devices to make a large range of colors. The idea that the subtractive primaries are red, yellow and blue (RYB) is confusing and should not be taught. It would be wrong to think that cyan and magenta are just fancy names for blue and red.”

– Stephen Westland, Professor of Colour Science at the University of Leeds in England

in science.howstuffworks.com (Links to an external site.)

“The color system that best matches the human eye is the red-green-blue color system. For additive color systems like computer screens, the primary colors of this type of system are red, green, and blue. For subtractive color systems like inks, the primary colors of this type of system are the opposites of red, green, and blue, which are cyan, magenta, and yellow. The red-yellow-blue painting color system is effectively a corruption of the cyan-magenta-yellow system, since cyan is close to blue and magenta is close to red. “

— from Science Questions With Surprising Answers

This video explains the new color wheel. Watch till about 2:20 for our purpose. The author’s book promo comes after that.

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How Complementary Paint Mixes Affect Each Other

CMY Color wheel demo in watercolor

Paints used: Holbein’s Opera, Manganese Blue Nova, & Hansa Yellow

Note how the three primaries can be mixed into a beautiful dark black in the center, without needing any readymade tube of black, which can never be as rich and deep and colorful as the black mixed from your primaries.

CMY Color Wheel in Watercolor Part 1 (Links to an external site.)

CMY Color Wheel in Watercolor Part 2 (Links to an external site.)

CMY Color Wheel in Watercolor Part 3 (Links to an external site.)

CMY Color Wheel in Watercolor Part 4 (Links to an external site.)

CMY Color Wheel Painting Project: Diagram and Model to Follow

Beyond the CMY Color Wheel: Extra Project For Watercolorists

Exploring Slightly Different Triads As Alternatives To Pure Primaries

Split Primary Color Wheel & Expanded PalettesIf the concept of CMY or process primaries seems too theoretical to work for watercolors, do look into the idea of a Split Primary Color Wheel (Links to an external site.), where two versions, a cooler and a warmer color of each of the CMY primaries, are used. A google search will shed more light on this approach. It’s a good compromise for artists until the paint manufacturers come up with perfect CMY primaries that match the scientific colors on the spectrum more accurately and can still offer the kind of pigment permanence artists need for their art. For my own color palette (personal choice of frequently used colors), the three primaries have been working well so far. But I always encourage my students to keep their minds open to the possibility of exploring other approaches as well and see what works best for developing their own styles and color palettes. In Nita Leland’s book, Exploring Color, she uses “expanded” palettes such as her Standard Palette (Cad Red, New Gamboge, French Ultramarine Blue), an Intense Palette (Winsor Red, Winsor Yellow, Winsor Blue, and a Delicate Palette (Rose Madder Genuine, Aureolin, Cobalt Blue), Opaque Palette (Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Cerulean Blue), Old Masters Palette (Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Payne’s Gray, and Bright Unsaturated (Brown Madder Alizarin, Raw Sienna, Indigo). She also has even more expanded palettes.It’s worth exploring your color choices in these different ways. After seeing the range of color mixes cyan, magenta, yellow triad can offer. Sometime limiting your color palette and the range can take your work in a different direction that’s worth looking into. Expanded Palette Color Wheels   Image credits: Dawn McLeod Heim. Images used for educational purposes only.

Split Primary Color Wheel & Expanded Palettes As Alternatives to CMY Primaries This option can be an extra project after finishing the CMY color wheel. For this extra option, you may do a split primary wheel (Links to an external site.) (video) or an expanded palette wheel.Some artists find the CMY or process primaries too theoretical to work well for watercolors. This is because the paint manufacturers still haven’t been able to reach the level of perfection to produce the scientifically accurate primaries quite exactly. The ones that are closer, are not as permanent. This is where the idea of Split Primary Color Wheel, can come handy for watercolorists. In this approach, we work with two versions of each CMY primary, a cooler and a warmer color. A google search will shed more light on this approach. It’s a good compromise for artists until the paint manufacturers come up with perfect CMY primaries that match the scientific colors on the spectrum more accurately and can still offer the kind of pigment permanence artists need for their art. For my own color palette (personal choice of frequently used colors), the three primaries have been working well so far. But I always encourage my students to keep their minds open to the possibility of exploring other approaches as well and see what works best for developing their own styles and color palettes. It’s worth exploring your color choices in these different ways. After seeing the range of color mixes cyan, magenta, yellow triad can offer. Sometime limiting your color palette and the range can take your work in a different direction that’s worth looking into.In Nita Leland’s book (Links to an external site.), Exploring Color, she uses “expanded” palettes such as her Standard Palette (Cad Red, New Gamboge, French Ultramarine Blue), an Intense Palette (Winsor Red, Winsor Yellow, Winsor Blue, and a Delicate Palette (Rose Madder Genuine, Aureolin, Cobalt Blue), Opaque Palette (Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Cerulean Blue), Old Masters Palette (Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Payne’s Gray, and Bright Unsaturated (Brown Madder Alizarin, Raw Sienna, Indigo). She also has even more expanded palettes.Here are a few examples of possible ‘sets’ of primaries.