Colour

Learn:

• How to mix colours (food colouring, watercolour and coloured pencil) – understand how you can make pretty much any colour from red, yellow and blue.
• How to use a colour wheel
• About primary, secondary, tertiary/intermediate and complementary colours

You will need:

FOOD COLOURING DEMONSTRATION:

• 4 glasses
• A large jug of water
• Red, yellow and blue food colouring

COLOURED PENCILS DEMONSTRATION:

• Red, yellow and blue coloured pencils
• Paper

COLOUR WHEEL:

• Colour wheel template (printed/copied by hand) We used one from the artyfactory
• Paintbrush
• Watercolour paint (you’ll only need red, yellow and blue)
• Palette (you can even use an ice cream container lid)
• Glass of water

Quick Colour Definitions

-> PRIMARY COLOURS: The three colours from which any colour can be obtained from mixing (red, yellow, blue)

->SECONDARY COLOUR: A colour resulting from mixing two primary colours in equal proportion.

-> TERTIARY/INTERMEDIATE COLOUR: A colour formed by mixing a secondary colour and a primary colour. So, basically mixing two primary colours in unequal proportion.

-> COMPLEMENTARY COLOURS: The two colours opposite each other on the colour wheel. They work well together.

Food Colouring Demonstration

1. Fill up three of your glasses 3/4 full of water.
2. Add a drop of food colouring to each glass, each glass with one drop of a different colour. Try and make sure that the mixtures are of equal strength, or else they won’t give the right colours. These colours are primary colours. From them, you can mix any colour.
3. Pick two colours to start with. Add an equal amount of each mixture to your last glass. The colour that results is a secondary colour. You will always get a secondary colour (orange, green, purple) by mixing an equal amount of two primary colours (red, yellow, blue).
4. Now, if you mix an equal amount of all three mixtures, you should get brown.

You should discover that:

• RED + BLUE = PURPLE
• RED + YELLOW = ORANGE
• YELLOW + BLUE = GREEN
• RED + BLUE + YELLOW = BROWN

Coloured Pencils Demonstration

Now, try the same thing with coloured pencils. Obviously, it will be harder to get a pure secondary colour, as the pencils are dry, so they won’t mix as easily.

However, if you are lucky enough to have watercolour pencils, you can brush some water over you pencil and let the magic happen!

Colour Wheel

Now that you’ve (hopefully) tried the demonstrations and seen how colours can be mixed, you’re ready to try mixing all of the colours above using just your three primary colours.

1. Start with the triangle in the middle. This is where you’ll paint your primary colours (red, yellow, blue). At the same time, add them to you outside ring.
2. Then move on to the triangles surrounding the middle triangle. This is where your secondary colours (orange, green, purple) will go. It will be made up by the colours that it is touching in the middle triangle. Also add your secondary colours to the outside ring.
3. Now things get more complicated. You have to mix the primary colour and the secondary colour on each side of the gap on your outside ring. This will result in an intermediate/tertiary colour (blue green, green yellow, purple blue, red orange, yellow orange, red purple).

Complementary Colours

Complementary colours are the colours that you can find opposite each other on the colour wheel. For instance, red-green, blue-orange, yellow-purple.

These colours go well together and suit each other. Think red-green Christmas decorations!

Don’t stop at watercolour! You can also try this with acrylics, oil pastel….pretty much anything that you have in red, blue and yellow you can give a go.

Have fun! 🙂