As an artist who paints, whether using watercolours, oils or acrylics, getting to know the colour wheel is exciting!
Why exciting? Well there is so much to discover for one reason. Experimenting with the combination of primary colours and secondary or tertiary will excite you as new colours evolve. When I was learning to paint the tutor encouraged me to experiment and record the results by making my own colour wheels. By this I mean once you have chosen say three colours and made a note of them as well as a note as to the quantity of mixture and you are delighted with the result – apply the colour to the wheel card you have made. Keep doing this until your wheel card is complete.
Eventually, you will have many colour wheel cards all with notations on them as to how they were made. This gives unique colours that you don’t get straight from the tube of colour. They are your own!
An example of this creativity is a range of colour wheels that you can refer to if you decided to do a seascape. Your colour wheel will have all the colours normally associated with a seascape. The same could be done for landscapes. Greens, browns and blues all with there own tints and shades. Try this method for yourself. Spend an enjoyable morning developing your own colour wheels then use them to paint something in the afternoon or evening.
I hope you have found this interesting. I will follow this up with some information on composition next time.
Happy painting!