I was a theatre person and I do love musicals so when starting on color theory of paint/pigment I can’t stop myself from singing “start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. . .” (Forgive me if I just stuck a song in your head!)
The beginning for color theory is the basic color wheel—one you likely did at some point in school and it’s the basis for the more advanced color theory exercises. (Check out *Wonderful World of Color or Preparing for Color Theory Studies for prep and set-up info)
Remember those primary colors yellow, red, and blue? These are the ones you can’t mix paint to create (well, technically most paints, years ago I did run into a type of paint that could!). If there are no primary colors in your paint, your paint is white. If you mix all three primary colors together you’ll get to black.
The primaries mix to the secondary colors: Green, Orange, and Violet (Purple). Those 6 colors (technically just the 3 primary colors) plus black and white are the basis for all the different hues, shades, tints, and saturation that I hope you explore with this exercise and the next two.
Draw a large circle at about 14” diameter (I traced a large mixing bowl), room for 12 paint swatches.
Mix the primary colors to the secondary colors:
Yellow + Red = Orange
Blue + Red = Violet
Blue + Yellow = Green
On your circle paint yellow at 12:00 and violet at 6:00. Then orange at 2:00, red at 4:00, blue at 8:00, and green at 10:00.
Once you have the secondaries mixed, now go on to mix the tertiary colors which are different proportions of the primary and secondary colors. Paint swatches of the tertiary colors:
Yellow-Orange (1:00)
Red-Orange (3:00)
Yellow-Green (11:00)
Blue-Green (9:00)
Red-Violet (5:00)
Blue-Violet (7:00)
Nothing fancy here—it is just an exercise for you to develop your eye for color. (Although I did multiple ones for grades in my theatre design and my color theory classes back in the day!). Here’s my recent one:
Once again a shout out to Ty Marshall, my undergraduate theatre design prof for all the color wheel exercises we did. He always said you can never do enough color wheels and he was quite right as I’m doing on now, many years later!
To be ready for the next 2 color theory studies I recommend saving your mixed secondaries so you have them ready to go. Reuse small, airtight containers to save mixed paint (I store my mine in old film canisters. . . for anyone who remembers those).
Mixing the colors and painting them onto a color wheel is so valuable by itself but so is studying it. Check out my What the Color Wheel Teaches post going over what to observe and learn from your color wheel.
Lighting the Rain 