Welcome! This article is a part of Crafted Colour – Practical Colour Theory for Craft series, which is aimed at helping you develop your colour confidence and craft with colour. Today you will learn about the colours which make up the colour wheel.
There are three parts to Colour Theory; the Colour Wheel, Colour Values and Colour Schemes. Today is about the Colour Wheel and tomorrow I’ll talk about Colour Values.
Part 1 – The Colour Wheel
Colours are arranged around a Colour Wheel based on their relationship with each other. Each colour shares something in common with its neighbour. The typical artist’s Colour Wheel includes Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colours
Primary
Red, blue and yellow are the Primary Colours of the artist’s Colour Wheel. Primary Colours are bright and fun. They are often found in kids toys.
Secondary
Mixing equal quantities of any two Primary Colours and the result is a Secondary Colour. The Secondary Colours of the artist’s Colour Wheel are orange, green and violet. Secondary Colours as a group don’t have a particular feeling associated with them. Most individual colours do evoke their own feelings and I’ll delve into that later in the series. 
Tertiary
By mixing a Primary Colour with its related Secondary Colour you get a Tertiary Colour. For example you can mix red with orange (which is a mix of red and yellow) and get a colour most commonly known as red-orange. Of course you could get creative and give this colour a fancy name like Scarlet Flame. You can also play with the proportions of Primary and Secondary Colours in the mix, resulting in an infinite range of colours. On the Colour Wheel Tertiary Colours are red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet and red-violet. Notice the Primary Colour is always listed first in the name.
So, now that the basic (and very dry) stuff is out-of-the-way, join me for Part 2 of Colour Theory, known as Colour Values or Tint Shade and Tone.
