Colour Theory

COLOUR THEORY

Primary Colours - RED BLUE YELLOW Pure colours that cannot be achieved by mixing.

Secondary Colours-VIOLET ORANGE GREEN Created by mixing two primaries e.g. Red & Yellow

Tertiary Colours such as Blue-Violet, crimson, red-orange Created by mixing a primary with the adjacent secondary

Complimentary Colours – are colours opposite each other on the colour wheel. These can be used in a painting to neutralise each other or create shadows. Adding a touch of red to a green can darken the green. Fill in your own with your coloured pencils on the Colour Theory Worksheet (download)

Colour Wheel Adapted for Coloured Pencil

Complementary colours don’t work so well as shade colours for coloured pencil mixes because the translucent quality of the pencils allows the shade colour to show through. So a red used to neutralise a green would tend to show through and muddy the colour. So how do we shade and still keep our colours bright?

Selecting a Shade Colour • choose your main colour e.g. green • the complementary colour of green is red but as the red will show through green we need to move around the colour wheel back towards the green to find a more suitable shade colour; perhaps some of the red-violets. • Try Caput Mortuum Violet for a darker green, light red-violet for a lighter green, light blue- violet for a blue-green and so on.

EXPERIMENT UNTIL YOU CAN SELECT A SHADE COLOUR THAT WILL DARKEN WITHOUT MUDDYING THE COLOUR AND WITHOUT SHOWING THROUGH YOUR COLOUR MIX ©Ann Swan