Color wheel

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The chromatic circle or color wheel is an ordered and circular representation of colors according to their hue or tone, where the primary colors and Their derivatives. Its use is compatible with both the Subtractive Color Synthesis models (artistic, pictorial) and the Additive Color Synthesis (light) models.

Natural chromatic circle degraded.

The chromatic circles can be represented staggered or in gradient (as in the image). Staggered can have any number of colors depending on the author, usually 12, 24, 48 or even more. The so-called hexagram, for example, It is a star that is placed in the center of the chromatic wheel, where the number of peaks corresponds to each color and opposites or complementary Colors can be shown. In short, it is the representation of colors in a circle or other geometric figure.

Traditional Color Wheel

Wheels of 7 and 12 colors of 1708.

Color wheels are ancient, Alberti in his De Pictura (1436), using the color wheel, but also the rectangle and the rhombus, represented the system of four primary colors of his time: yellow, green, blue and red.

The traditional coloring pattern with the three primary colors red, yellow and blue was discovered in the 17th century and since then many works have been produced, such as that of Moses Harris who in 1766 developed a chromatic circle of 18 colors based on this model and including a greater range of colors by adding light and dark derivatives.

chromatic circle of 1772.

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This traditional model, also called RYB (red-yellow-blue), was popularized with Johann Wolfgang van Goethe's book Goethe, Theory of Colors from 1810, who developed a chromatic circle with six colors: yellow, orange, red, violet, blue and green, which continues to be taught in the plastic and graphic arts,<ref. name="placed"></ref.> despite the fact that its empirical use can present serious drawbacks or inaccuracies in color composition.

According to the traditional model, the opposite pigment colors are:

Blue is the color opposite the orange.
Red is the color opposite the green.
Yellow is the color opposite the violet.

And so on with all the colors, such as blue green (sea green) or red orange.

Important fact to know: warm colors like red, orange, and others are usually on the right side of the color wheel, while cool colors (blue, green, teal, etc.) are on the right side left of the circle.

Although scientifically obsolete because it does not meet the definition of a complementary color in which a neutral or black color must be mixed, it is still a model used in artistic environments, causing confusion about primary and complementary colors

Natural Color Wheel

Circle of 12 colors.

Circle of 24 colors.

The result of distributing around a circle the colors that make up the segment of natural light is called the natural chromatic circle, so most of its components are spectral colors. A more exact model arose after the advent of color photography and based on Newton's studies of light, which is used in industrial color production, with greater precision in color representation, and from which RGB models are derived. and CMYK, in which the colors are: red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and magenta. The most common mix of these colors is represented by a 12-color wheel, but you can make any number of mixes and create a color wheel with thousands of colors.

According to the additive color model, opposite light colors on the color wheel are those that lie opposite each other.

The yellow is the color opposite the blue.
The magenta is the color opposite the green.
Cian is the color opposite to red.

There is reciprocity between the RGB color model and the CMY color model; therefore, the opposite colors are:

Red is the color opposite the cian.
The green is the color opposite the magenta.
Blue is the color opposite yellow.

Black and white are opposite colors, but like gray they are colorless (they are neutral colors) and therefore do not appear on a color wheel, white is the presence of all colors and black is its complete absence.

However, when combined, black and white form grey, which is also marked on scales. This forms a circle of its own called the "grayscale color wheel" or "circle of grays".

This triad of colors is the generator of the infinity of all possible colors to be perceived by the eye or feasible to be used in graphic arts, since it allows a finite number of subdivisions.

Primary and derived colors

The primary colors depend on the type of color wheel. In a traditional or RYB, they will be red, yellow and blue in shades related to traditional natural pigments, which may be standardized or may depend on those chosen by the authors.

In a CMYK subtractive color wheel, the primary colors depend on the pigments used; for example, those that come in a color cartridge for printing, which are standardized. However, there are variations depending on the type of pigment, dye, quality, artistic medium, etc. These primaries are cyan, magenta, and yellow.

In the RGB additive color wheel, the primary colors depend on the one hand on the sensitivity of the human eye to light, since our normal sight is trichromatic, but they also depend on the type of light. These primaries are red, green, and blue.

Secondary colors are the product of mixing two primaries. This mix can be in exactly equal parts or depending on the shade an author is looking for, so there can be many variations. Tertiary colors are the mixture of a primary with a secondary and are shown in the 12-color circles.

To graph the relationships between colors, Charles Blanc devised dodecagrams or colored stars in 1867. The following images are dodecagrams with which a comparison can be made between the main models:

Traditional coloring.

CMYK subtractive model.

Natural chromatic circle (RGB).

The denominations of the primary colors and their derivatives are the following:

Traditional coloring (RYB)

Primary: red, yellow and blue.
Secondary: orange, green, purple, violet or purple.
Tertiaries: orange red, amber or orange yellow, yellow green or chartreuse, green or turquoise blue, purple blue or violet and purple red.

CMY subtractive model

Primary: cian, magenta and yellow
Secondary: red, green and blue.
Tertiaries: orange, yellow green (also called lime or chartreuse), cian green, cian blue (also called cerole or azur), violet and fucsia.

RGB additive model

Primaries: red, green and blue.
Secondary: cian, magenta and yellow.
Tertiaries: orange, yellow green (also called lime or chartreuse), cian green, cian blue (also called cerole or azur), violet and fucsia.

As you can see, in the three models there are three primary colors, three secondary colors, and six tertiaries.

Color Harmonies

Chromatic hexaedron, harmonic face of the RGB cube.

The color wheel is very often used to build or determine the color harmonies to be used in a given piece of art. In this sense, there are several kinds of color harmonies, including the following:

Harmony of colors in triad-equidistant

Occurs when it is a composition of colors using those shades of the chromatic circle that are arranged in the form of an equilateral triangle, equidistant from each other and with respect to the center of the circle, such as Yellow-Cyan-Magenta or the triad Green-Red-Blue.

Basic-tertiary harmony

This is the color palette designed by the painter Carlos Benítez Campos with basic and tertiary colors as follows: first, we choose three basic colors for our palette (primary or secondary without distinction), and then we add to it two or three colors that result from mixing two by two, the primary and secondary colors of the color wheel not chosen first. In total we will obtain five or six colors to paint a picture in perfect chromatic harmony.

Painting according to Matisse

Like other painters of his time, Matisse used color and shapes to express emotions and feelings. In this fragment of a radio interview, carried out in 1942, he expressed his opinion:

Interviewer: - Mr. Matisse, why do you paint?
Matisse: - To translate my emotions, my feelings and the reactions of my sensitivity in terms of colour and shape, which cannot make even the most perfected photographic camera, even in colors, or cinema.
Henri Matisse, Reflections on art, Buenos Aires, Emecé, 1977

Color can be used symbolically

Color, like words, can be given symbolic meanings. Many times these symbols are typical of a culture. This means that they can be interpreted by those who know them. In our culture, mourning is symbolized by the color black. In some Eastern cultures, on the other hand, the color of mourning is white. For Hindus, orange is the mystical color, whereas in the West, we would be astonished to see a priest in an orange cassock.

Colour and communication

In daily life we perceive reality "in color", that is, color gives us information about the objects and situations that surround us. It is understandable then that it seems to us, in principle, that in the images the color has a naturalistic and documentary description. But color also has an aesthetic dimension: there is a high degree of subjectivism in its use. Color also has symbolic values: culturally accepted meanings that amplify and modify the value of the image. Certain colors seem more appropriate than others to achieve certain communication purposes. For all these reasons, the conscious use of color in images broadens and enriches the range of creative resources.

Create a color wheel

Primary and secondary colors in a chromatic circle.

It can be made of any number of colors, you just have to keep in mind that the number of colors has to be divisible by 6, so that the secondary colors are always right in the middle of two primaries, in such a way that the number of colors (n) divided by 3 (the primary colors) gives us the colors or places that there must be a separation between the primary colors (x) and x divided by 2 gives us the midpoint between two primaries that are the secondary ones, all the others are tertiary colors.

${displaystyle n/3=x}$ ; Place of primary colors