Draw a Color Wheel
The color wheel is a fundamental guide used to reference how colors are mixed to produce other colors. Every artist should have a basic understanding on how these colors are created, and making a color wheel is an excellent way to become familiar with them. Once the basic color wheel is learned, additional colors can be expanded upon and practiced.
Instructions
1. Draw a triangle using your ruler and pencil on a piece of paper. Now draw an upside-down triangle on top of the first triangle.
2. Use the compass to draw a circle at each point on the triangles. A good size is setting the compass to 1 inch, making 2-inch circles. Now fill in one additional circle in between each triangle point. There should be a total of 12 circles.
3. Set up the first triangle's circles, which are going to be the primary colors. Primary colors are red, yellow and blue. Start with red at the top, followed by yellow to the right and blue to the left. Color these circles in with either the paint, colored pencil or marker.
4. Set up the upside-down triangle's circles for the secondary colors. These are green, purple and orange. These colors are created by mixing two of the primary colors together. The green is blue and yellow mixed, so it will be the circle in the middle between these two at the triangle tip. Purple is red and blue mixed, so will be in between these two colors. Orange is yellow and red mixed together, so it will be in between those two colors. Mix these colors if using paint and then paint the circles, or color them in with pencil or marker.
5. Fill in the remaining circles. These circles between the two triangle's points are the tertiary colors. These are created by mixing a primary color with a secondary color. The names of these colors tell you exactly which colors are mixed, such as red-violet, yellow-orange and blue-green. Mix these colors and paint the circles in between each triangle point or color them in with pencil or marker.
6. Label each color with the color name. Each triangle can be shaded a color to denote if it's the primary triangle or the secondary triangle. This can be used as an excellent learning tool for a new student. Once the first 12 colors have been attained, you can expand your color wheel by adding white and black to each color to create additional tints of each color.
