Thursday, March 14, 2013

Colorful Color Wheels

A color wheel is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle that shows relationships between primary colors, secondary colors tertiary colors, complementary colors, etc.

Primary colors are red, yellow, and blue arranged at three equally spaced points on the colors wheel. These colors are not able to be created. All other colors come from the primary colors except black and white. When an artists goes to buy tubes of paint they can only worry about buying red, yellow, blue, black, and white if they want to because everything else can be mixed or created from these colors. An artist has a lot of flexibility with the primary colors.
Primary Colors
Secondary colors are purple, organce, and greem and are also arranged at three equally spaced points on the colors wheel placed between the two prinmary colors that make them. They are made by mixing the 2 adjacent colors together on the color wheel.
Secondary Colors
Tertiary colors are red/orange, yellow/orange, yellow/green, blue/green, blue/purple, and red/purple placed between the primary and secondary colors that make them on the color wheel. Their are two tertiary colors on a color wheel per every primary color. When listing them it is important to note that the primary color always comes first then the secondary color second.
Tertiary Colors
Values of the colors are created by adding black or white to any color. You can create shades by adding black to any color and tints by adding white to any color.

Complementary colors are red/green, blue/orange, and yellow/purple. When mixed together they make brown. If used together side by side they create a brighter appearance of each other. You can locate complementary colors on the opposite side of the color wheel.

Warm and Cool colors:

Color wheels have been, and continue today to be an artists tool to understanding color and values. Color wheels help artists to create an understanding of mixing and creating values of colors to use in different mediums of art. Artists need to be able to use the color relationships to their advantage. The color wheel has been used to focus on many aspects of life outside of the art room. People use color wheels and the relationships of colors in decorating their homes, school or work presentation, dressing for the day, etc. People use color wheels in their everyday lives and careers as well. Tattoo artists, interior designers, hair colorists, publishing/advertisements, coating cars, fashion designers, etc.

The interactive white board will be a great way for me to explain the color wheel to my students. At the moment the program scares me a little and I am somewhat intimidated by its many features. However, I know that it is a great way to teach students in a fun, engaging, and collaborative way. I plan to create a lesson that allows students to create their own color wheels in their own style. I first want to give them the background information so they understand the relevance and importance of the color wheel and colors in general in the art room and in the real world. I found a few started websites that have interesting ways of getting students to play with the way a color wheel is set up and why/how the colors came to be created. The Interactive Color Wheel: Fun Color Theory is a great website where student can click on the different colors that make up the color wheel and learn more about how the colors are made and their properties. Another great site is the Free Art Game for Kids: Interactive Color Wheel, which is a site where students can learn how to mix the colors without using real paints just yet. It is like a trial and error. The site also provides other activities that will help student further their abilities once they have learned why color is so important.

By the end of the interactive white board presentation I want my students to be ready to create their own abstract color wheels to resemble the below image:
 

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