Coding Contempo

  Materials: Grey palette paper Small plastic painting knife Gamblin oil paints: Titanium White Yellow Ochre Cadmium Red Burnt Sienna Burnt Umber Payne’s Grey Paper towel or rag   Instructions: Step 1 On your grey palette paper, mix an equal quantity of Titanium White and Burnt Sienna using your painting knife. Separate the mixture into 9 piles to form a 3-by-3 grid. The goal is to create a grid of colours ranging from cool to warm, and light to dark. The left column of the grid will consist of cold tones, the middle column of neutral tones, and the right column of warm tones. The top row of our grid will be for light tones, the middle row will be neutral, and the bottom row will consist of dark tones. Step 2 Add a small amount of Titanium White to each of the 3 piles in the top row. Add a small amount of Burnt Umber to each of the 3 piles in the bottom row. Blend the colours using your painting knife. Step 3 Add a touch of Payne’s Grey to the left column to create cold tones. These wi

Now that we understand different types of primary colors, we can begin to understand the color wheel. As old as color theory itself, the color wheel originated with Isaac Newton’s color circle published in 1665. The theory behind a color wheel is that it shows the relationship between primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, all evenly spaced in a circle. Using the common RYB model as an example, we can see a color wheel with red, yellow, and blue spaced evenly around a circle. Corresponding secondary colors (green, purple, and orange) sit evenly between the two colors they are mixed from. So, in the case of RYB we see green between blue and yellow, purple between blue and red, and orange between yellow and red.

Primary colors are hues that can be mixed to produce a wide gamut of colors. As we’ve already learned, there are different sets of primary colors depending on what mixing model you are using. Most of us are familiar with the red, yellow, and blue (RYB) primaries, which is taught to children when they are acquiring basic art skills. These are still the primaries that most painters, artists, and interior designers use today. The RYB model is an example of a subtractive color model. Subtractive mixing is when inks, colorants, or pigments form new colors by absorbing some parts of the visible spectrum. Cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) are also subtractive primaries. Typically used in color printing, traditional red and blue were substituted with magenta and cyan over time as technology advanced and these pigments allowed for a wider range of colors. CMYK is also the name for the printing process itself, with the K standing for “key ink.” This is typically a black that helps pull out art