I am still studying Colors. Today I started building up the color wheel as instructed by Dr. Betty Edwards.

Primary Colors (Yellow, Red, Blue)

Secondary colors (Orange, Violet, Green)– they cannot be achieved by mixing 2 primaries since it creates muddy versions. Thereby manufacturers created separate pigments for them.

Tertiary Colors (Yellow orange, red orange, red violet, blue violet, blue green, yellow green). They are created by mixing 1 primary with 1 secondary except for red violet where Alizarin Crimson  (red with hint of blue) is used instead of Cadmium Red (primary) since the latter contains a hint of orange (yellow and red) and when mixed with violet (blue + red) will yield muddy version because all 3 primaries are used.

The complementary colors can be determine by the colors across each other i.e. yellow and violet, yellow orange and blue violet etc. Notice the numbers of the clock on the wheel. This can help memorize the color wheel easier.

Warm Colors

Cool Colors

Colors are way more complicated than I thought it would be. Learning the color wheel is a pre-requisite to learning more about colors. I hope you learn something today.