The Color Wheel

A Brief Review on Color Theory

Color

The visual response to the wavelengths of sunlight identified

as red, green, blue and so on; having the physical properties of

hue, intensity, and value.

PRIMARY COLORS

Primary colors are colors from which all other colors are made.

RED BLUE YELLOW

SECONDARY COLORS

Secondary colors that are created from equal amounts of a pair of primary colors

ORANGE GREEN VIOLET

Tertiary colors are colors made from equal amounts of a pair of primary and secondary colors.

Tertiary Colors

red-violet

blue-violet

blue-green

yellow-green

yellow-orange

red-orange

Three consecutive colors on the color wheel

Analogous colorsAnalogous colors are any three colors which are

side by side on a 12 part color wheel, such as yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-orange.

Complementary colors are any two colors which are directly opposite each other in the color wheel.

Examples are red and green, red-purple and yellow-green. In the illustration, there are several

variations of yellow-green in the leaves and several variations of red-purple in the orchid.

Complementary Colors

Shades are dark values of a color. One usually makes shades by mixing a color with different amounts of

black.

TINT

SHADE

Tints are light values of a color. One

usually makes tints by mixing a color

with different amounts of white.

A Monochromatic color scheme is one color.

Monochromatic

The primary color is integrated with neutral colors such as black, white, or gray.

The split complementary scheme is a variation of the standard complementary scheme. It uses a color and the two colors adjacent to its complementary color.

SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY

The triadic color scheme uses three colors equally spaced

around the color wheel.

Triadic Color Scheme

Let’s review what we just learned on our handhelds.

1. Open up the color review for students PowerPoint in Docs-To-Go

2. Open it and answer the questions using the list view.

3. We will review it together