Basics
So I saw that you were particularly interested in the color palette posts and I though to create a series with color theory posts and color combination examples for you to tackle the color combination completely! But baby steps first!
This first post will be dedicated to understand the color wheel colors and how they are created!
The Color Wheel
So what is the color wheel? Firstly did you know that it goes back to the early 1700s?
A color wheel or color circle is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle, which shows the relationships between primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors etc.
How Does the Color Wheel Work?
A simple color wheel consists of 12 color hues arranged around a central hub.
The colors in a color wheel are divided in three categories:
- Primary colors
- Secondary colors
- Tertiary colors
So let’s explain the way that the colors are being categorized in the wheel in this first step to color theory.
In the wheel we characterize as primary colors RED, BLUE and YELLOW.
From those 3 primary colors we create the secondary and the tertiary ones with the below formula:
In other words a combination of 2 primary colors creates a secondary color. So in the circle you will see that the secondary colors are 2 places away from the primary colors.
While a combination of a primary color and a secondary color creates a tertiary color. If you see the tertiary colors are between a primary and a secondary because they were created from their combination.
So is this clear of how the colors are created in the wheel? Are you ready for step 2?
DBVA 