Color Theory

In the 1700s Sir Isaac Newton made the earliest discoveries about relationships between colors

He observed relationships between yellow, blue and red-and called them the primaries: other philosophers built color wheels

around this idea:

Goethe’s color wheel: 1810

By the 1900s, this color wheel was used regularly by artists:

Artists who work with pigment still use this type of wheel today to organize and name color relationships

In the 20th century, artists and technicians began to understand light mixes differently from pigment: when TV monitors and

computers project light-the primaries are different….

These colors are known as the additive primaries

When we use technology to print images, the main colors we use are different still:

We call these colors the subtractive primaries

For our processes that use pigments to mix, we will continue to learn and memorize the color relationships on the traditional

color wheel:

PRIMARY COLORSSECONDARY COLORSTERTIARY/INTERMEDIATE COLORSANALOGOUS COLORSCOMPLEMENTARY COLORSTRIADSSPLIT-COMPLEMENTS