Tip of the month – August, 2006

Looking at the color wheel, the question that arises is “What do we use it for?” First of all, the color wheel illustrates color relationships. The colors are presented in an orderly fashion, relative beside relative or in analogous relationships. Starting at the yellow at the top of the wheel, you can travel around the wheel to the left or to the right You can see if a color is analogous to the yellow or complementary to the yellow.

On the left of the color wheel, you pass through the warm side of the wheel in descending order to the red/violet color. On the right side of the wheel, you move through the cool colors in descending order to the violet.

With the color wheel, you can make the comparison of how light or dark a color is. You can decide how warm or cool a color is relative to its neighbor.

Using a color wheel, you can see your color choices and know if they will work for your expressive intent. Have you chosen the right colors for a particular mix?

This visual shows the primary triad. The three colors are equidistant from one another. As you re-position the triangle, other triads can be located.

In this illustration, the triangle has a different shape – isosceles – with two sides of equal length. This type of formation helps in the selection of the split complementary palette.

To locate a split complement, choose a complementary pair. In this case, yellow and violet are the complementary pair.

  

If you wish to key off the yellow, choose red/violet and blue violet (the neighbors of the violet). Eliminate the direct complement (violet). The split complement is yellow, red/violet, and blue/violet.

If you wish to key off the violet, choose yellow/orange and yellow/green (the neighbors of the yellow). Eliminate the direct complement (yellow). The split complement is violet, yellow/orange, and yellow/green.

In the illustration, you can see that the split complement will create a larger variety of colors

The resulting mixes can be tints or tones or shades. They can be very pale or very saturated.

Yellow, Vermilion, and blue/violet together are the content of a split complement which keys off blue/violet.

Vermilion, Permanent Rose, and Cerulean Blue are the content of the split complement adjacent to the previous one.

When these split complements are joined, Vermilion is common to both of them. Use the color wheel to locate this five color palette selection. I have a numerical formula to help you to find the colors.

Choose any color and call it #1. Move clockwise or counter clockwise on the color wheel and choose four more adjacent colors. Eliminate color #2 and color #4. Locate the complements of color #2 and color #4. Colors #1, #3, and #5 with the complements of #2 and #4 are the five color palette which is based on two adjacent split complementary sets.

Locate other five color palettes (double split complements) on the color wheel.

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