Basics: Using colour

A bite-sized look at colour theory: there are 3-primary colours, 6-primary colours, neutrals, and coloured greys. And most colour wheels consist of 12 colour hues. The practical resources (and exercises) are shown below so you can complete in class or at home and as a reference to support future projects. Here are three possible exercises (tasks) for you to try.

Colour Wheels (Primaries)
Two basic concepts - primary colours and colours as 'temperature'.
Task to try: study, blend, test and paint two colour wheels (primary and secondary colours only) as shown below (top - 3 primaries, lower 6 primaries - 3 'warm' and 3 'cold' colours). In theory if you mix two primaries in equal proportions you will get a true secondary colour. A lot depends on the brand of paint/pastel but give it a go!

NB note the named colours on the lower wheel apply to paint rather than pastel but it will help you in choosing which pastels are cold and which are hot:

Second task to try: from the upper colour wheel mix the inner segments which are the six neutrals*. These combine a primary and a secondary (by blending together the opposite colours - orange and blue, yellow and violet, red and green). To vary the opposite neutrals, mix slightly more of the nearest colour e.g. in the blue-orange mixtures, to get two different neutrals the segment near to the primary blue has slightly more blue added in the mix and for the one near the orange needs an orange bias in the mixture. 

NB:  you will need to experiment with the order in which you blend the colours to alter the colour bias or weight yellow-orange, red-orange and so on. For example, by laying yellow first then red on top will give you a red bias (a red-orange) whereas laying red first followed by yellow on top will give a yellow bias (a yellow-orange) to the secondary colour (orange) produced.

*A pure neutral is made of equal amounts of the constituent colours e.g. 50% blue and 50% orange (with secondaries also consisting of 50-50 mixes, so 50% yellow and 50% red, 50% blue and 50% red, 50% blue, 50% yellow)

Third task to try: how to mix a range of coloured greys. Coloured greys are probably the type of colours you will mix most often. These are not pure neutrals as the mixture of primary to secondary varies e.g. 90% blue and 10% orange, 20% yellow and 80% violet and so on. Draw a grid like below and paint the 3 primary colours at the top and the 3 secondaries at the bottom. Then blend the two opposites (also called complementary colours) in varying amounts e.g. mix blue and orange, mix red and green, mix yellow and purple to create the 'greys'. The more cells in the grid the better. However many you have in your grid, the middle line will be 50% primary and 50% secondary.