Color Theory

In the 1700s Sir Isaac Newton made the earliest discoveries about relationships between colors

He observed relationships between yellow, blue and red-and called them the primaries: other philosophers built color wheels around this idea: Goethe’s color wheel: 1810

By the 1900s, this color wheel was used regularly by artists:

Artists who work with pigment still use this type of wheel today to organize and name color relationships

In the 20 th century, artists and technicians began to understand light mixes differently from pigment: when TV monitors and computers project light-the primaries are different…. These colors are known as the additive primaries

When we use technology to print images, the main colors we use are different still: subtractive primaries We call these colors the subtractive primaries

For our processes that use pigments to mix, we will continue to learn and memorize the color relationships on the traditional color wheel: PRIMARY COLORS SECONDARY COLORS TERTIARY/INTERMEDIATE COLORS ANALOGOUS COLORS COMPLEMENTARY COLORS TRIADS SPLIT-COMPLEMENTS