Color Theory: Split Primary Palette

Introduction

We have recently made a post on contrasting colors, which reminded me just how important the colors themselves were, so I wanted to a short series on the principles of color: Color Theory; starting with split primary colors.

What are split primary colors you say? They have their root in the primary colors we are already familiar with: yellow, red, and blue; the split comes from the warm and cool hues each said color leans. If you are familiar with their properties, you can use them to your advantage when mixing (see below).

Chart

So lets talk about our chart - its a mixing cheat-sheet, if you will. Take a look at the leftmost column, although each of these colors have their own unique name, for now, let's refer to them by their "temperature". From top to bottom we see: cool yellow, warm yellow, warm blue, cool blue, warm red, and cool red. Depending on how we mix temperatures we get vibrant to muted mixes; either of which can be beneficial, depending on what you're using them for.

Mixes

• Cool yellow + warm blue = vibrant green (great for young green pants)

• Warm yellow + cool blue = muted green (great for moss, or shadows within landscapes with lots of green)

• Warm blue + cool red = vibrant purple (I love using this combo when painting northern lights)

• Cool blue + warm yellow = muted purple (when done correctly this will be your go to universal neutral tone, especially great for urban sketching)

• Warm yellow + warm red = vibrant orange (beautiful for sunsets and flowers)

• Cool yellow + cool red = muted orange (works really well for brick buildings)

Final Note

When you are first starting out, it's exciting to have a lot of colors to play around with, and that's okay; but if you want to take your work to the next level, try cutting down on the number of colors you use. Don't feel discouraged, I was the same way: my first watercolor set had 24 colors in it, soon after which I cut down to 12 (split primaries plus earth tones) and the limited colors that I had to chose from only pushed me to make more conscious decisions with the few options that I did have.

Next up, we will be taking a closer look at the relationships between colors on the color wheel.

Happy coloring,

Viktoria