color wheel, posts

02. The Color Wheel

Hello everyone,

Welcome to week two of Color and Design! I hope everyone had a good weekend and is ready to get started on our next module, which goes over the color wheel basics. Detailed information about the assignment can be found on the description page at https://coloranddesign.community.uaf.edu/module-2/.  

Also, additional information about the color wheel basics can be found under the fundamentals tab at https://coloranddesign.community.uaf.edu/color-theory-fundamentals-the-color-wheel/. I’ll be adding more fundamental pages for reference as the semester progresses.

Please complete the original color wheel and your own artistic interpretation of one by our Monday deadline. Images can be posted via Google Drive links in the comment section below.

Have a great week,

Annie

 

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65 Comments

  2. Sarah Griffen-Lotz

    Wow, it’s been a really long time since the last time I painted! This week’s assignment was a good icebreaker to get back into it. For the concept, I wanted to make a paint splat style heart. I designed a couple of other ideas in my sketchbook, including a rainbow sunset and a rainbow vase of flowers.

    I worked from the inside out and experimented with mixing colors on my palette, going clockwise on the wheel. The only tube colors I used were primary red, blue, and yellow. In my last painting class, I relied heavily on premixed store colors. Using primaries only required a lot of trial and error. I lost count of the times I washed off my palette!

    I applied the best color matches I could mix to the wheel in my sketchbook. Blues, greens, and violets were the biggest struggle. Titanium white definitely came in handy, as these came out very dark initially. I re-painted them a few times in the sketchbook color wheel before using them in my final painting. I was very intuitive about ratios, and noticed that mixing purple was best done with roughly a 5:1 blue to red ratio and some titanium white to brighten it.

    Also, I’ve never taped the edges on a painting before. It looks really sharp and gives it a nice clean edge. I’m a fan of doing this now!

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zgsRXIiBel-yOYIQFhRMqMZKhBNFxhiY?usp=sharing

        1. Annie

          Hi Sarah,

          Looks great! I do have a question though. In the future can you link directly to just the image you want us to see? That makes it a bit easier to make sure we are looking at the same thing as there are other items in your folder.

          Thanks!

          1. Sarah Griffen-Lotz

            Oh my gosh, I thought I replied to this the other day but it slipped my mind. Thank you! Also I re-did my Google Drive folder and will post direct links to paintings from now on.

      1. Annie

        Hi Lucy,

        I agree with the others. Your owl turned out great! Also, I’ve made similar comments to others, but can you please link directly to just the exact file you want us to see here rather than the whole folder? That way we can be sure we are all looking at the same thing.

  4. Callie Bennett

    Hello everyone. I had fun with this assignment. I hope the link below works. I uploaded my color wheel assignment and 4 of my sketches/paintings for the week. My final project, the creative color wheel assignment will be based on the tree drawing I did for one of my journal sketches/paintings. My large 18″x24″ paper pad is at the post office and I pick it up tomorrow. I will upload my finished assignment before Monday.
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YJMN4E7aAAgB4NQgQHEw94ccqcWe_fRf.

      1. Annie

        Hi Callie,

        Thanks for sharing. In the future can you please link directly to the image file you want to share, rather than the whole folder? That way we can be sure we are all looking at the same thing. Thanks!

  5. Gabriel Ball

    For the first part of the project, I did my best to recreate the standard color wheel using only the primary colors and black and white paint. For the most part, I think it went pretty well. I did have a hard time with some of the darker colors like the Red-Blue combos. I’m not sure why the mixing was so difficult, my guess is the red is too impure or diluted to mix properly. When mixing with other colors or adding white, it seems to just become brownish and dingy.
    My reinterpretation of the color wheel went pretty well. I’m happy with how it came out. I created a separate spiral design for each primary color and transitioned between all the secondary and tertiary colors as the spirals flow outward and merge with each other. I decided to fill in the background areas with a light blue and pink. I felt like black would be too overpowering and white made it look unfinished. I think the light colors help brighten up the whole piece without being too distracting or overbearing.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_yRB_2S_3dnok5nzH9xYXxh3BhqxAjSf

    1. Sarah Griffen-Lotz

      The red-blue combos were a huge problem area for me too. It seems like most red paints turn purples very brown-ish. I like your painting, the lighter background colors make a nice contrast for the saturated foreground.

      1. Annie

        Gabriel,

        Thanks for sharing. And Sarah, yes, you’ll notice that happening and even supposedly standard reds can vary a great deal from brand to brand. That’s part of the goal of this assignment so people can start to anticipate what their pigments can or cannot do. 🙂

        Also, next time please just link to the exact images you’d like us to see to make sure we are viewing the same things and not accidentally something else in your folder. Thanks!

  6. Gabriel Ball

    For the first part of the project, I did my best to recreate the standard color wheel using only the primary colors and black and white paint. For the most part, I think it went pretty well. I did have a hard time with some of the darker colors like the Red-Blue combos. I’m not sure why the mixing was so difficult, my suspicion is the red is too impure or diluted to mix properly. When mixing with other colors or adding white, it seems to just become brownish and dingy.
    My reinterpretation of the color wheel went pretty well. I’m happy with how it came out. I created a separate spiral design for each primary color and transitioned between all the secondary and tertiary colors as the spirals flow outward and merge with each other. I decided to fill in the background areas with a light blue and pink. I felt like black would be too overpowering and white made it look unfinished. I think the light colors help brighten up the whole piece without being too distracting or overbearing.

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_yRB_2S_3dnok5nzH9xYXxh3BhqxAjSf?usp=sharing

  7. Isabella Darrah

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C0sulbiDGgm2X7c9Dh9zhM3YoHZwOOW4/view?usp=sharing
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pcQ0c8Y–SVN8JBb-acC86z65rYSkO1S/view?usp=sharing

    I created the wheel with some cheap markers but there was surprisingly good range of color. I based the rest of the assignment on the cupcakes that I make at work. They kind of look like roses but the idea is that it is a bird’s eye view of platter of a dozen cupcakes. It was a pretty easy and fun assignment.

    1. Annie

      Hello Isabella,

      I like the way the roses turned out. However, for this class markers will not work since we cannot do “wet on wet” mixing with them, which is why they are not on the supply list. Have you had a chance to pick up acrylics yet?

    2. Annie

      Nice job! You’re violets and some blues are a bit muddy, but that is to be expected as it’s due to imperfections in the store bought pigments. So, no point deductions there. 🙂

      That is one of the other goals of this assignment. To see what our pigments can and cannot do which will be very helpful in future projects.

  9. Amber Shoemaker

    This exercise was a lot of fun for me. I made sure to only use Red, Yellow, Blue and White as to ensure I was truly learning how the colors all mix together. This is something I really hadn’t done before because i usually just use the premixed colors that all come in a set together.
    I started one color wheel and really didn’t like it, so I made a second one. I think I feel good about how this one turned out, even though it isnt a perfect circle by any means.
    My color wheel interpretation is pretty abstract, which is what I enjoy to paint the most.

      1. Annie

        Hi Amber,

        Thanks for adding a link in the actual comment since I don’t think others expect to click on your name to find it. In the future, would you mind linking directly to the image files, rather than the whole folder? That way we can be sure we are all looking at the same thing, which will get more confusing as the semester goes on and our folders fill up.

        As for the color wheels, they turned out great!

  13. Kayley

    Here is the file to my color wheel and artistic piece base don color wheel colors. I attempted it with gouache paint. I gave up part way through the artistic piece because it kept not working out and looking terrible. But at this point I just want it out of my sight.

    The only color I got out of the tube was purple for the color wheel. I have always had a hard time mixing purple for some reason.

    Let me know if the link doesn’t work.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=139lg_TytvMZki-czZtI4v5YAaz9KaOyA

    1. Annie

      Hi Kayley,

      I think these came out well. Thanks for hanging in there. And yes, you are right. Making violet as we should be able to theoretically with paint doesn’t always work well due to impurities in the store bought pigments.

      For future projects please use acrylics. Gouche doesn’t have the opacity we will need for many assingments.

  14. ahatfield2

    I had a lot of fun with this assignment! My standard color wheel was made using only the primary color paints. This was my first time ever really mixing paint colors, so there was definitely a learning curve. When mixing the colors for my artistic interpretation, I didn’t exactly get the same shades as the first time. Purple was absolutely the hardest to mix but I feel that I started to get more purple and less brown during the second painting.

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s24hXHmGetrLXYTI5iTyyI8ZEfqPzjJK?usp=sharing

    1. mgfarmer

      Your interpretation was abstract but had a calming, fun feeling attached to it. It was kind of like looking into one of those illusion paintings where you start to feel like the circles are moving towards you. Your colors turned out vibrant and way better than mine! I’ll definitely have to keep on practicing.

  15. lelotze

    This was the first time I have used acrylics, we use house paint, essentially, for set painting, and guache for design rendering. I should definitely have chosen a simpler subject matter than I did as I am getting used to acrylics! The color wheel itself was not too much of a challenge. I thought it was interesting I used a lot more yellow than expected when I mixed the oranges, and a little more blue than expected for the greens. Fuschia and indigo were probably the most challenging colors to mix. I think I over painted the fuschia three times because it kept drying differently than expected. For my interpretive piece, it is just too hard to see the different colors I so carefully mixed because they are such relatively small slivers scattered all over. I think it is a good effect for creating northern lights, not so great at displaying the color wheel concept. I was intending to over-paint wave texture in the reflection part, but it was just too much to take on for my first project.

    my sketches as well as the color wheel (round and interpretive) are here:
    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12EGuJChVBJQ5Piin8e1pazwnOOVhLEpO?usp=sharing

    1. mgfarmer

      I loved your interpretation of the color wheel as the northern lights! Instead of blending you used more vibrant color blocking which gave the effect of this one painting I loved when I visited the Art Institue of Chicago. (I just spent an hour looking for it online and couldn’t find it 🙁 )

  16. mgfarmer

    Hello everyone! I was surprised to find out this week was very hard for me even though its the first week of painting! I had forgotten I haven’t painted since high school and only then I used water colors. My skills are in photo realism in a graphite medium…so you can say I’m not into using color. I found it especially difficult to get a vibrant color from mixing. I realized that once dry, the paints were way darker than the original pigment. It’s going to take me some time to get used to this medium. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C2UXhh2NAGP9-Hw-qRFtglBz5HdUGrq8?usp=sharing

      1. Annie

        Great observation about some colors shifting when they are dry. Everyone should be experiencing this to some degree, and hopefully by observing it now you can start to try and anticipate that effect in future projects. Nice work!

  17. KELSEE HASKIN

    I got a little more carried away with the design and couldn’t help but think of iridescence in nature, which led me to cicadas and beetles.
    I initially drew my design with graphite, and then gradually washed over with oil paint. I only used the primary colors with titanium white, and blended the three to get all of my other hues.
    I am quite the novice with paint, but the blending was a new approach to the color wheel I have not tried in the past.
    I found this project satisfying.

    1. Annie

      I’m glad you got carried away with the design. I think it came out well. And yes, blending can be a challenge, but hopefully after the next assignment or two it will become more second nature. Nice work!

    1. Annie

      Chasity,

      Locally that’s not really possible and the price point for them is so high I wouldn’t expect students in a 100 level class to invest in them. We can still get great effects from the materials we have access to, and part of the point of this assignment is to realize what our supplies can and cannot do so we can adapt and correct for that we come to our more technically challenging optical illusion projects at the end of the semester.

      Good work!

  19. kdschlosser

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=10wB_3uKrMOI1fB7h29F_h2Db3PAfqE-M
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/161ubKPX-f7RqdImOf6sORRHz5t8_pyMR/view?usp=sharing

    Yay! I just finally found this page by using the email link for this coming week! I have been looking for ages! (Is there a way to navigate to these directly that I’m somehow missing?)

    I found it most difficult to get a good range of colors in the oranges and purples. The pallet mixing and variations made me think of venn diagrams, so I made a huge page of overlapping bubbles – most of them showing the actual colors combining as if mixed, though not all.

    1. Annie

      Oh good! I’m glad you found it. The corresponding post for each module will be at the top of our class homepage until the next week’s post is opened up, then it will be directly below that one.

      And yes, it is a difficult to get a full range of colors just by mixing. Many are running into that, which is OK, as that is part of this assignment as well. Learning what our supplies can and cannot do. Thanks for sharing!

  20. jessen cao

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lxDTruN8D_hjiD25c5ZHQj_59DUDCa0n
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WIRjDtfMGdVZsY-SHFSnVq4W2fe8e7m7

    Unfortunately, my paints haven’t come in yet, so I had to use two different sets (had to do these on different days), so there might be a slight color difference! I found that the yellow I was using was pretty transparent, and it was difficult to mix the green and orange hues that were closest to the yellow.

    1. Annie

      Good observation! Yes, yellow across all brands and types of paints is more transparent, or “low opacity” as we usually say when describing the physical nature of paint, and can be a bit frustrating sometimes due to that quality. Keep that in mind when you’re sketching out designs in the future since the pencil marks will almost always come through.

  22. klzinnerzwink

    Sorry I’m late joining the group. Here are my week 2 sketches, color wheel and painting. I had a really hard time with making the violet and purple tones on my color wheel so I ended up using the straight tube violet paint. I am using a lot of flow so the color applies more smoothly. I really hate chunky paint and colors, but it’s a learning process. I am going to try priming my page prior to the next painting.

    https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nF7ghM_vX-ur0Kh1LZ2wVweS-DNwj3xm

    (I have no idea why the link isn’t working…)

    1. Annie

      Yes, many people had a a hard time with violet, which is to be expected. I’m sure over the next week or two you’ll get down exactly how to get the paint texture and “brush feel” that you like best, which will make everything easier. Nice work!

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