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Start Art 5 57 www.painters-online.co.uk Primary colours The three colours of red, yellow and blue on the colour wheel are known as the primary colours. These cannot be created by mixing other colours, but they do have variations within them such as a purple- red or an orange-red. Titanium white is a very important colour in acrylic painting. As you progress you may wish to add some extra colours to your palette, such as magenta for flowers, coeruleum for skies, dioxazine purple, a lovely dark purple useful for creating dark undertones, and payne’s grey, a versatile dark colour. As you gain experience you will create your own voice and unique colour palette and your work will become recognisable through this. Secondary colours Secondary colours are made by mixing the two adjacent primary colours on the colour wheel. Red and blue make purple; red and yellow make orange; and yellow and blue make green. To mix vibrant purple, orange and green, you should mix the two primaries biased towards the same colour. For example, the purple-biased ultramarine blue with purple-biased crimson alizarin (hue) make vibrant purple, whereas phthalo blue (green shade) and cadmium red, which has an orange bias, make a greyish purple. Tertiary colours Mixing a primary and a secondary colour will produce what is known as a tertiary colour. For example, yellow added to orange makes a yellow-orange. Complementary colours Complementary colours are contrasting colours situated opposite each other on a typical colour wheel, such as red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple. They play an important role in painting. Placed next to each other, they make dazzling and vibrant contrasts. They can also be used to modify or knock back one another – for example, a bright yellow can be dulled by adding a touch of purple. This extract is taken from 30-minute Acrylics by Soraya French, published by Collins, £7.99 Clementine on Blue Cloth In this example of complementary colours, the orange placed against the blue creates a lovely contrast Yellow and blue mixed together make green, a secondary colour. Yellow and red make orange, and red and blue make purple Orange and yellow mixed together make yellow-orange, which is a tertiary colour Red, blue and yellow are the primary colours