Colour wheel explained

GREETINGS learners, parents and guardians!

Welcome to your Visual and Performing Arts weekly lessons brought to you by your favourite newspaper, The Manica Post.

Learners are expected to have an exercise book and a pen to write work given as exercises. Parents or guardians are encouraged to assist learners with special needs.

This week our topic is on pre-colonial visual arts of Southern Africa. You are expected to be able to define colour, group colours according to how they are made, draw a colour wheel and display that in your room.

From ECD we learn about colours and sometimes select clothes on the basis of these colours. But have you ever thought of the question, what is colour?

What is colour?

Colour is reflected light. Another name for colour is chrome. The word hue is used to mean any colour. To help us understand more about colours, we use a colour wheel.

The colour wheel is an arrangement of colours on the basis of their relationships. It is made up of three types of colours namely primary colours, secondary colours and tertiary colours.

Primary colours

The primary colours are three. They are blue, red and yellow. They are called primary colours because they are made from natural pigments. Mixing equal amounts of primary colours produces another class of colours called secondary colours.

Secondary colours Secondary colours are also three. They are purple, orange and green. Purple is also referred to as violet. Secondary colours are made by mixing equal amounts of any two primary colours.

Tertiary colours

Tertiary colours are created by mixing equal amounts of a primary colour and a secondary colour. The tertiary colours are six. When identifying a tertiary colour we use the primary colour first. That is the standard way of naming tertiary colours. The tertiary colours are red-purple, red-orange, blue-green, yellow-green, blue-purple and yellow orange.

Relationship of colours on the colour wheel

Complementary colours

(i) Colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel are called complementary colours.

(2) Colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel are called analogous colours.

(3) The intensity of a colour is called value so the brightness or darkness of a hue is called intensity of value.

Task

Draw a colour wheel on an A3 or A4 sized surface and hang it in your room. You can use crayons or water paints on Manila, bond paper, or any surface you have access to.