SPLIT PRIMARY COLOR WHEEL--WHAT'S IN YOUR PALETTE?

 I like to discuss things I wish I had understood earlier in my painting journey. Things that would have made for less frustration. So I assume that if I didn't get it, maybe some of my students have a hard time with the subject too. I would never claim I wasn't taught, just that I didn' get it. 

For the first time ever in a dozen years of teaching, I decided to talk about the color wheel. THE SPLIT PRIMARY color wheel. 

Most are familiar with the general color wheel, with primaries of red, yellow and blue. And  that red and blue make purple, right? So why is my purple so muddy? Yellow and blue make green....so why does my green look so gross? 

This is because, in reality, it's hard to find a true primary red or blue in paint form. We solve this by having a warm and a cool of each primary color: warm red looks a little orange next to a cool red, which looks a bit pink. A warm yellow looks a bit orange compared to a cool yellow, which has no orange in it, or no RED BIAS.

BIAS is the color your paint leans toward. To make a pretty, intense green, you want a blue that has a green BIAS, or leans toward green, like pthalo or cyan. To make a pretty violet, use a blue with a red bias...(not that it looks red or purple, but it leans more to violet and has no green in it) and a PINKer red, which we say has a blue bias. It has no orange tendencies.

(If you have difficulty trying to find the bias of a blue, mix a little lemon yellow with it. If it makes a pretty green, that blue has a green bias. If it makes an olive green, that blue has a red bias)

In class we created a split primary palette. It's important to make it from the colors in your own palette, what you have. It helps you determine what colors you can make, but also what colors you may need to add (or subtract) to your palette.

Below are two helpful youtubes from Dr. Oto Kano. The first is on the basic color wheel and what makes a warm and cool color. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5IO4uSDQps&list=PLpD2RS3zo8zRBXGjKjp_5ZWBTZnKW-4XE   about 17 min

The second explains in detail what a split primary palette is and why it is useful.

https://youtu.be/AjGvtp0lOtw     about 19 minutes

After we made the color wheel, I asked students to find other colors they have and find out where they would fit on this color wheel. We labeled the colors with the brand names on the tubes instead of the generic hue name.

You can see in the unfinished picture below (I don't have violet or blue violet in there yet) how I've created a split primary color wheel, based oncolor bias. The dark lines represent a division. If you keep your color mixing between those line (ex: warm yellow to warm red; cool yellow to cool blue; cool red to warm blue) then your colors will remain unmuddied and intense.  

The tiny dots represent a brand color name that would fit close to that area of the wheel.