Colour Me Happy

For aggggees I've been meaning to post about colour theory. All right, so I don't know that it's an actual theory, but it sounded good. I know a lot of people wonder what colours go with what, and so forth, and whilst a lot of it is subjective, some of it isn't. For instance, we all know that pink and red clash.

So I thought I'd share a little knowledge I picked up years ago in Art class, back when we all made colour wheels!

But It's Round, It Has To Spin.

I'd like to note that the original wheel I found on google, and I added the Primary/Secondary/Tertiary labels. I say this so you guys know that I didn't think it necessary to label the colour red, for instance. I'm pretty sure you all know what red is.

The basis of this idea is that colours can be separated into three categories. These are:

• Primary - Red, Blue and Yellow. These cannot be made by combining other colours and from these all secondary and tertiary colours are formed.


• Secondary - Orange, Green and Purple. These come from combining two primary colours.


• Tertiary - Brown, and all shades in between the secondary colours i.e. blue-green. These are made by mixing one primary and one secondary colour, or three primaries (pretty much the same thing).

The colour-wheel is labeled above to show you which colours belong to which category. Now, here's the theory part.

The Theory Part.

Colours which are next to one another on the colour wheel, and colours which are opposites complement one another.

The first one is self-explanatory. That's why yellow and green look nice together, and similar gradients. The second one isn't so obvious.

A colour's opposite is (obviously) opposite it on the colour-wheel, but if you need to work it out without a wheel handy, here's the rule.

A secondary colour's opposite is the primary colour which does not go into making it.
So red and blue make purple, meaning that the primary left over - yellow - is purple's opposite. Yellow and blue make green, making red green's opposite, and blue is the opposite of orange.

If you've ever been painting in art class and attempted to darken a colour by adding black, your art teacher probably slapped your fingers and told you that colours should be darkened by the addition of their opposite (although too much makes brown) and never, ever black. Unless your art teacher was actually nice, unlike mine.

That's Very Black & White.

It's worth mentioning that black and white are not colours. White is light, black is the absense of it. Back in art class we referred to black, white, and all the greys in between as shades. Gold, silver, bronze etc are not colours, but metallics. My terminology may well be off, as I say, this is all from art class many, many years ago. But that's why those 'colours' aren't included, because by this theory they're not colours.

If you're wondering about pink - I suspect many of you are - you just take the normal wheel and make them all paler. So pink is essentially red, and thus will look good next to pale/mint green, and paler versions of purple and orange which are next to it. Same with other lighter or darker shades, and you can, of course, mix darker/lighter successfully.

I appreciate that a lot of this is rudimentary and most of you probably already know it, but some don't, and even for those who do, it's handy to have a little reference.