paint wheels technique

Outside of color theory, in the real world

where color really matters, is color practice: mixing your own
why make a paint wheel?
colors from paints.
how to paint a hue circle
This page gets you started with the best practice of all — making
your own paint wheels. how to make a paint wheel

lessons from a paint wheel

why make a paint wheel?
Paint wheels are a very effective way to learn the
complex landscape of the color space, the best methods for
mixing paints, and the handling attributes and mixing behavior
of your palette pigment selections and brand(s) of paints.

Many watercolor instructors recommend that you disply your

palette color mixtures as a mixing plaid — a grid of color with
vertical stripes glazed over horizontal bands. This is adequate to
show the relative intensity and opacity of each color in
comparison to all the others, but the individual mixtures get lost
in the color clutter, and the color mixing is limited to glazing (one
color painted on top of the other).

schematic of a finished paint wheel

With the paint wheel, color mixtures are displayed as locations

within the visual color wheel, and the appearance of the
mixtures reveals the logic of subtractive mixture saturation
costs — the chroma of a mixture decreases as two mixed
colorants are farther apart around the hue circle. Within this
basic framework, even subtle differences among painter's
palettes are easy to see.

Because the paint wheel requires many different color

combinations painted into different locations within an intricate
pattern, you quickly develop an efficient method for working
with paints and skill in using your brush to get paint onto
paper.

You also learn the characteristics of different mixing techniques.

Unique color effects result from mixing paints wet on the paper,
or by glazing, or by premixing on the palette — and making
paint wheels using each method helps you see these differences
clearly.

With a paint wheel, all the basic skills — following a pattern,

preparing and mixing paints, keeping colors pure, applying paint
with the brush, rinsing the brush between different colors,
mixing paints (sequencing glazes, mixing wet in wet or charging
wet paint), working around wet paint areas — are practiced at
the same time, and everything is made more factual because
there is no distracting picture you are trying to reproduce.

A paint wheel is also beautiful. The mandala shape, visual

texture and radiant fullness of color, and the repeated
movements of mixing and brushing the paint, make the paint
wheel a soothing and insightful meditation on color and the
physical act of painting.

If you mix by glazing one color on top of another on a day of

normal humidity, a paint wheel can be finished in within two
hours. Try it!

how to paint a hue circle

But before I launch into paint wheels ... some
painters may be content simply to paint out a categorical hue
circle, showing the variety of hues, in approximately their
correct location as a perceptual hue circle, using the most
saturated single pigment paints and their mixtures. This is an
effective help in learning to discriminate between similar hues
(orange yellow and yellow orange, for example), and a handy
reference for evaluating the effects of different light sources
on color appearance.

A template for the hue exemplars as a hue circle is shown in the

diagram (below). Simply draw a circle to fit your choice of paper;
use a protractor to divide the circle into eighteen 20° segments;
and use a circle template to make 18 hue exemplar areas
centered on each "spoke", with an extra exemplar area for black
or gray in the center.

template for a simple hue circle

Any selection of paints can be used. I chose the most

appropriate pigment(s) using the CIECAM hue plane, and then
determined the relative proportions in specific hue mixtures from
the relative pigment locations around the hue circle.

The table below shows an efficient recipe for all 18 hue

exemplars, using only 7 common and easily obtained pigments
(referenced by CI name). The hue of the pigments chosen for
these mixtures should be very consistent across brands, but use
this cadmium paint guide to identify the exact hue of the
different cadmium paints offered by different paint brands.

a visual hue circle

hue hue angle matching pigment CI name
yellow 0° cadmium yellow PY35
orange yellow 20° cadmium yellow deep PY35
yellow orange 40° 1:1 .
orange 60° cadmium orange PO20
red orange 80° 1:1 .
orange red 100° cadmium scarlet PR108
red 120° 1:1 .
violet red 140° quinacridone magenta PR122
red violet 160° 3:1 .
violet 180° 2:2 .
blue violet 200° 1:3 .
violet blue 220° ultramarine blue PB29
blue 240° phthalo blue GS PG15
green blue 260° 2:1 .
blue green 280° 1:2 .
green 300° phthalo green YS PG36
yellow green 320° 2:1 .
green yellow 340° 1:4* .
gray/black . . all
*An excess of yellow is necessary to shift the mixture away from
yellow green.

The proportions shown are visual proportions; that is, if the ratio
is 1:2 you use whatever mixture of paints necessary to get a
completely dry visual color that is about 2/3d's of the way
between the two paints. If the hue comparison seems difficult,
aim to get the color lightness in the right proportion. The larger
hue steps are a little harder to get right: paint out the mixture
and let it dry first, before you commit it to your work. For the
violet red to violet blue span, mix the violet first, then paint in
the two intermediate steps. Black is mixed by combining all the
paints.

a simple hue circle

The example (above) does not use the same pigment recipes as
the table: maganese violet and cobalt violet were used to mix
some of the violet steps. I don't recommend this, as it adds a
distracting variety of granulation texture to the exemplars.

Of course you can create a similar hue circle, using only pure
pigment paints, or a smaller number of paints — the three
"primary" colors (benzimida yellow, quinacridone magenta, and
cobalt teal or phthalo blue GS) are a good alternative. For that
project, just identify the pigment nearest to each 20° spoke in
the CIECAM hue plane. However, this also introduces a larger
variation in both the lightness and chroma of the hue exemplars,
something that you avoid by basing them on mixtures from a
smaller number of paints.

how to make a paint wheel

Here I explain in detail how to lay out and paint a
paint wheel. The key points:

• The 12 swatches are equally spaced around the circumference

of a large circle, aligned as 24 "spokes" of equal hue.

• Color mixtures spiral toward the center of the wheel as the two
mixed paints are farther apart, so that the mixed color is always
roughly on the mixing line between the two paints used to
make it.

• Neutrals mixed from complementary paint colors are arranged

around the inner circle, showing the variety of grays the palette
can produce.

• Mixtures that match the hue of the paint at the outermost end
of the spoke will display differences in the lightness and chroma
of the same hue mixed by different paints.

• Mixtures on the same spoke that were made with equal

proportions of the two mixed paints do not match the hue of the
paint at the end of the spoke when there are differences in the
tinting strength of the two paints; the hue is shifted toward the
paint with the higher tinting strength.

• The mixture swatches are large enough to give a reliable

impression of the mixed color.

• The paint wheel is a beautiful mandala like pattern when

completed, and shows many peculiarities of the subtractive
mixing landscape as a single image.

Basic Layout. I build paint wheels around the twelve point

color wheel. This uses 12 different paints and requires 66
unique paint mixtures — usually more than enough to explore
the range of pigment effects around all parts of the hue circle.

The paint wheel measurements I've found most convenient are

shown in the diagram and listed in the table (below). The key
measurements are indicated over the mixture pattern for two
opposing colors of paint (yellow and blue violet).

paint wheel measurements and single color swatch

patterns
To make each measurement system easier to work with, the metric
measurements make a slightly larger wheel

template measurements

wheel diameter 34cm 13"

large swatch size 25mm x 35mm 1" x 1¼"

compass circles (radius)

1 [circumference] (L) 17cm 6½"

1+2 (S) 16cm 6"

1+3 (L) 13.5cm 5¼"

1+4 (S) 12.5cm 4¾"

1+5 (L) 10cm 4"

1+6 (S) 9cm 3½"

1+7 (L) 6.5cm 2¾"

inner circle 4.5cm 1¾"

Note: "L" is long spoke, "S" is short spoke. To make each

measurement system easier to work with, the metric measurements
make a slightly larger wheel.

These measurements are tailored to fit on a Fabriano Artistico

14" x 20" watercolor block, which is widely available in the USA
and Europe; the dimensions also work well on a watercolor half
sheet (15" x 22"). You can add ¼" (0.5 cm) to all the radius
measurements (swatch lengths) if you want the wheel a little
larger (easier to paint into) ... or you can multiply all the
measurements by any factor to scale the wheel larger or smaller,
as your paper size may require (multiplying by 1.5 increases the
wheel size by 50% or 6½ inches). I recommend you don't go
smaller than 12 inches in diameter. The swatches are too small
to display the colors distinctly, and greater skill is required to lay
on the paint.

Constructing the Wheel. Before starting, the paint wheel

outline should be laid out lightly with a hard graphite pencil,
compass and a C–Thru ruler, in the following steps:

(1) Lightly draw the central segment of the two diagonals from
the opposite corners of the sheet: the point where these cross is
the center of the sheet.

(2) Measure the radius of the paint wheel from the center using
your ruler, and use a compass to scribe (1) the circumference
and (2) the inner circle. (If you want to prevent an unsightly
hole in the center of the paint wheel caused by twisting the
compass around its pin, first secure a square of cardboard or
heavy paper over the center of the paper with masking tape.)

paint wheel layout (steps 1 & 2)

(3) Draw a vertical line through the circle center (the compass
pin hole), perpendicular to the top edge of the paper. (Measure
the distance of the pin hole from the paper side edge; mark this
distance along the top edge, and rule a lightly drawn line
between the two points.)

(4) Align a protractor to this vertical line and centered on the pin
hole, and divide one of the half circles (180°) into 12 equal units
(15° apart). Then flip the protractor over, and mark in the same
way on the opposite side. (If possible, use a 360° or circular
protractor instead.)

paint wheel layout (steps 3 & 4)

(5) If you intend to use a 1/2" acrylic flat brush to apply paint,
then you can rely on the width of the tuft to paint the swatches
by painting on both sides of the central spoke (see example
paint wheel below). All you require are the central spokes for
each hue angle.

Use an 18" C-Thru ruler (image, right) or similar tool to draw

the paint wheel spokes through the matching protractor marks
on opposite sides of the wheel; continue the line to the outer
circle on both sides. (Do not draw the lines inside the inner
circle; there is nothing to paint there, and the lines are
unsightly.) The circle is now divided into 24 equal slices.

(6) Using the compass again, scribe the six inner circles of the
paint wheel. It greatly reduces confusion when painting the
wheel if you break the circles into short arcs that only cross the
spokes that each circle is used to divide (these are the
alternating long and short spokes, indicated by "L" and "S" in the
measurement table, above.)

paint wheel layout (steps 5 & 6)

Your layout is done; it should take you about 15 minutes. Skip to

step 8.

(7) If you intend to use a round brush, or you want an

extraordinarily finished visual result, you will need to draw the
swatch edges as two parallel lines, either 12cm or 1" inch apart,
without drawing the central spokes.

Carefully mark the hue angles with the protractor as before, and
scribe the inner circles as before. If you have taped a card at the
center of the wheel (to protect the paper from the compass pin),
remove it.

Now use a "C-Thru" brand plastic ruler, the 18" long one, to
scribe the lines. Simply align the ruler over the protractor marks
so that the marks are spaced 4 grid squares (=½") from the
ruler edge, and scribe the line. Repeat 24 times around the
wheel to complete one side of each long and short spoke. Then
rotate the paper a half turn to reverse direction, and continue to
finish the opposite sides.

To minimize visual clutter, don't rule inside the 2¾" (6.5cm)

circle.

Next, for the single stroke swatches near the center, repeat the
same operation, but this time align the protractor marks so that
they are just 2 grid squares (=¼") from the ruler edge. Make
sure you keep track of which are the long swatches (on the short
spokes) and which are the short swatches (on the long spokes).
They alternate, long short, all the way around the wheel. Again,
rotate the sheet and continue to finish.

a C-Thru 1/8" grid plastic ruler

you will need the 18" long version

alternate paint wheel layout (step 7)

If you can't find a C-Thru ruler, then you must use a long ruler
or yard/meter ruler, and extend the protractor marks to the
circumference of the wheel, mark the measurements on both
sides of the lines for both the 1" and ½" swatches, and then
scribe the lines. (The marks for a single long and short spoke
are shown as green and red dots in the diagram, above.) This
takes quite a bit longer to do!

Your layout is done; it should take you about 30 to 45 minutes.

(8) Remove the paper used to mask the compass pinhole.

(9) Use a kneadable eraser to gently remove stray marks if

desired.

Brushes and Painting Strategy. The 12 numbered swatches

around the outside of the wheel are the samples of the 12
unmixed paints.

For the glazing or wet in wet paint wheels, I make these

swatches with two strokes of a 1/2" acrylic flat brush, side by
side to form a large rectangle, 1" wide by 1¼" long, starting at
the arcs with radius of 6½", 5¼" and 4" (long spoke) or at
radius 6½" and 5¼" (short spoke).

The last (inner) swatch is a single stroke, starting at the 2¾"

(long spoke) or 3½" (short spoke) radius.

Again, you should use only a 1/2" acrylic flat brush for
painting, as a sable flat tuft will spread out too wide under the
brushstroke pressure to match the swatch dimensions. You can
of course use any brush you want — but it's much harder to do
the work, and the results are usually so ragged that they
distract from the color comparisons.

If you use a round brush and mix paints on the palette, which
produces the most finished results, then a #6 brush is usually
the most convenient.

Selecting Your Paints. Now choose the 12 paints you want to

use in the paint wheel.

The diagram (below) shows my preferred allocation of hues,

both as they are spaced in a perceptual hue circle (inner circle,
where the distance between hues is equal to the perceived
visual difference between them) and as they will be spaced in
the paint wheel (outer circle).

perceptual hues and paint locations in the paint

wheel

I discuss different paint selections in the next section, but the

strategy shown above expands the space allocated to red hues
and contracts the space allocated to violet hues. This reflects the
prejudice that warm and blue hues are more important for an
artist to understand than violet hues, and the fact that there are
very few viable violet pigments available in artists' materials.

Preparing Your Paints. Mix the 12 pure colors with water

before you start painting. Squeeze out roughly 1" of tube paint
into separate wells or mixing cups of your palette, and dilute
them with an equal quantity of water — 1/2 tablespoon to 2
teaspoons gives plenty of paint at an optimal saturation. This
ensures that you start with the same concentration of paint for
every color, and the colors are at their peak chroma.

When diluted in this way and mixed in equal proportions,

mixtures of two paints will display, as shifts toward one color or
the other in the hue of the mixture, any differences in the
pigment tinting strength and paint pigment load
(concentration of pigment) in the brand(s) of paints you're
using.

If you want to match the hue of each spoke of the paint wheel,
you must adjust the mixtures by eye. The alternative is to adjust
the dilution of your paints so that they all have equal tinting
strength by adding more water or more paint to each mixture.

The compromise is to add more paint to the pigments with low

tinting strength (ultramarine, virdian, cobalt and iron oxide
pigments), and less paint (or more water) to the pigments with
high tinting strength (cadmiums, phthalocyanines, pyrroles,
dioxazine violet). Even if the tinting strength is only roughly the
same, it will be much easier to match the mixtures to the spoke
hues.

Mixing Strategies. You can mix paints in at least three

ways: (1) by glazing, (2) by mixing on the palette, or (3) by
mixing on the paper. Each method raises slightly different
problems and teaches you different things about the paints.

circle pattern of paint mixtures (for yellow)

1. The fastest way is to mix by glazing (painting one pure color

on top of the other). First lay down pure swatch of the "primary"
yellow color (the pure color on the circumference of the wheel)
at long spoke 1, then paint the same yellow into the 12
rectangular areas to be mixed with yellow inside the wheel, 6 on
either side of the pure hue swatch (see the pattern diagram
above). Proceed from the outer to the inner swatches, and save
for last the two small, single stroke swatches on the inner circle.

Rinse your brush, and proceed in the same way with the paint
directly opposite the color you have just painted — this is long
spoke 7 (blue violet) for yellow. Paint the 13 swatches as before,
and save the small overlapping swatches at the inner circle of
the wheel until last.

By now the yellow paint should have dried completely, so that

paint can be glazed over it; if not, wait until the paint has dried.

Move to the next color toward red (deep yellow, long spoke 2),
and repeat the same pattern. You will paint the pure patch, and
11 new swatches. At one swatch (the short spoke between
yellow and deep yellow) you will glaze the deep yellow over the
primary yellow patch you just painted; at another (the short
spoke between red and violet red) you'll glaze the yellow over
the blue violet. Let the colors dry, and move to the color
opposite deep yellow (blue, at long spoke 8), which will be
glazed over yellow, deep yellow and blue violet. Paint the two
inner swatches last, to give the deep yellow sufficient time to
dry. And so on for all the rest of the colors ... you'll paint the
pure patch, and 11 foundation or glazing swatches, depending
on the number of colors already painted.

By applying the twelve paints in a specific sequence, rather than

in strict counterclockwise order, you can change which colors are
glazed on top of any others. The usual method is to glaze the
darker valued paint over the lighter valued paint, and the more
transparent paint over the more opaque paint, so you may want
to lay down the swatches for each paint in order of increasing
dark value and/or increasing transparency — for example, (1)
yellow (Y), (2) orange yellow (OY), (3) green blue (GB), (4)
yellow green (YG), (5) red orange (RO), (6) green (G), (7)
violet red (VR), (8) red (R), (9) blue (B), (10) blue green (BG),
(11) blue violet (BV) and (12) violet (V). (Refer to the color
locations in the diagram above.)

sequence of swatch painting in double glazing

A: one side of the swatch is painted with the first paint; C: the entire
swatch is painted with the second paint; C: the other side is painted
with the first paint

However, because the outer swatches are painted with two

brush strokes, you can easily display the two paints glazed in
opposing order, with the two samples side by side for
comparison (diagram, above).

The procedure is scripted. For each new color you paint in, first
paint the double strokes in the swatch on the circumference.
Then for each remaining double swatch, if there is no paint in
the swatch, then paint a single stroke into one half of the swatch
area (A, above); leave the two single stroke swatches unpainted
on one side (it doesn't matter which, but be consistent). As you
work, if you encounter a swatch (double stroke or single stroke)
that already has a stroke painted into it, then paint over the
entire swatch (B, above). Once you have completely painted the
paint wheel in this manner, go back and paint over any unglazed
color with a final stroke (C, above). (You can see the result of
this procedure, especially in the violet mixtures, in the split
swatches of this mixing wheel.)

Always wait until a paint has dried completely before attempting

to glaze over it, and paint the glaze as a single brush stroke so
that you don't dissolve and lift the paint underneath.

With this method it does not matter which order the paints are
applied, so you can choose the next paint to apply in a way that
minimizes the time you have to wait for paint to dry.

The glazing method helps you to learn the transparency,

tinting strength and particle texture of paints, and glazing
brushwork. There is no paint mixing required.

A glazing paint wheel can normally be finished within 1 to 2

hours.

2. To mix on the palette, prepare all the paints in advance, as

before.

First, go around the paint wheel and paint in each pure paint
sample around the circumference. This lets you confirm visually
the color selection before you put any more work into it, and it
provides visual examples of the spoke hues, which you will need
in order to match the hue of the mixtures.

Between each color, thoroughly rinse your brush and shake out
excess water, to keep the paint colors unpolluted and at a
constant dilution.

Now overcharge your brush with paint, hold it over the paint
well until it stops dripping, then wick the brushful of paint into a
clean paint well or palette area; do this in a series with the first
six paints. Now go back, and wick into the first paint sample the
same amount of the corresponding mixing complementary paint:
for example, blue violet with yellow, blue with deep yellow, teal
with red orange, blue green with red, green with violet red, and
yellow green with violet. Mix this up with the brush, and paint
the mixture into the two opposing short swatches on the inner
circle. Rinse, and repeat for the other five complementary color
mixtures.

Note that you paint these complementary mixture swatches into

the smaller (1") inner strokes, and you paint them at right
angles to spoke of the two colors you are mixing (see the
diagram above).

The reason that you paint these complementary mixtures first is

so that you can assess the relative tinting strength of the two
paints, and make dilution adjustments (adding more paint or
water) as necessary to make the rest of the paint mixes easier
to do.

That work done, rinse your brush and wick out ten brushfuls of
the yellow paint into clean mixing wells or palette areas. Rinse
the brush, pick up a brushful of the first mixing color, mix it with
one of the yellow color samples, and paint this mixture in the
appropriate position. Rinse the brush, and pick up, mix and paint
the next mixing color. Continue until all the yellow mixture
swatches have been filled in.

It's advisable to test the mixture of paper first, to make sure the
hue matches the spoke it is painted on. If you must adjust the
mixture, thoroughly wick out the mixture you have from the
brush, rinse it, and pick up the desired paint.

After you have finished with this first color, clean the palette and
lay out nine brushfuls of the next base color: one less, because
you have already done its mixture with yellow. Mix and apply all
remaining colors, and repeat. Each time you wick out a new
base color, you reduce the number of samples by one. For the
last color, you will only wick out a single paint sample.

This method helps you to learn the relative tinting strength

of paints, palette mixing skills, paint brush accuracy, and
working over and around wet paint areas. You can apply
the paints in any order.

A mixing paint wheel takes considerably longer, up to 4 hours,

depending on the amount of care you invest into painting the
swatch corners and matching the paint mixtures.

3. The third method is to mix on paper, by first laying down

one color, then charging the swatch with the second paint while
the first paint is still wet. This is the hardest mixing technique to
do in a controlled way. The simplest method is to lay down one
of the paint colors as one stroke of the double stroke swatch, or
one half the length of the single stroke swatch, quickly rinse the
brush thoroughly, squeeze the tuft dry with a paper towel,
charge the brush with the second paint, and apply it as the
second stroke of the large swatch or the opposite end of the
single stroke swatch. When you apply this second color you
must paint into the first stroke so that the two paints puddle and
blend. You must rinse the brush and apply the second paint
quickly or the first paint will dry on the paper; you should also
use juicy applications so that the swatches have ample liquid to
diffuse.

This method is most attractive if you absolutely do not attempt

to blend or adjust the paints with the brush after they have been
applied — let water diffusion and evaporation mix the paints.
This means you cannot tilt or jostle the paper as you work. You
have to move quickly, think quickly, and know what you're
doing. It's fun if you know how!

With this third method, the paint staining, diffusion behavior

wet in wet, and paint application skills become more of a
focus.

With this method the swatches take much longer to dry;

depending on your weather and paint viscosity, it may take a
day or more to complete a paint wheel, but most of that time is
spent waiting for the paint to dry — that is, doing other things.
 lessons from a paint wheel
Trial and error with paint wheels — changing the
hues in the twelve positions around the wheel, the paints for
each hue, the manufacturers for each paint — taught me the
many tradeoffs I faced in choosing a working palette.

A paint wheel based on the tertiary color wheel forces you to

choose twelve paints to fill each color slot. This may seem to be
an arbitrary and silly exercise. But it leads you to consider the
alternative paints available for each color slot, and to think
about the effect that one paint selection has on the mixtures it
makes with all other paints. These are the two fundamental
problems you must face in any palette design.

The wheel below is based on a palette I discovered with the

paint wheel method after about thirty variations in the selection
of 12 paints. It's not the selection I would use now, but it
illustrates some of the tradeoffs you must consider when
choosing paints.

The paints used are (reading counterclockwise around the

twelve color points of the tertiary color wheel): (1) Winsor
& Newton aureolin (or Daniel Smith hansa yellow light), (2)
Winsor & Newton indian yellow (or Daniel Smith hansa yellow
deep), (3) Daniel Smith perinone orange, (4) Daniel Smith
perylene scarlet (dark and slightly subdued), (5) Winsor &
Newton quinacridone red, (6) Winsor & Newton quinacridone
magenta PR122, (7) Winsor & Newton winsor violet (dioxazine),
(8) Winsor & Newton french ultramarine blue, (9) Winsor &
Newton prussian blue (now I would use Winsor & Newton
phthalo blue GS), (10) Winsor & Newton cobalt turquoise light
(more evocative than cobalt turquoise), (11) Winsor & Newton
winsor green BS (winsor green YS is not as dark or powerful),
(12) Winsor & Newton permanent sap green. (For my current
selection, see the end of this page.)

I tried paint wheels with the siennas and ochres included in the
orange to yellow slots, but found it was better to explore these
pigments as part of a separate earth palette.

Paint wheels will let you explore every part of the color
wheel, the saturated colors with the unsaturated, the mixtures
you are familiar with (blue and yellow) with the mixtures you
may never tried (teal and violet).

There are many intriguing corners of the color wheel — the dull
color areas under yellow, orange and green blue, for example —
and a whole world of paint textures and wet in wet color effects.
Take your time, and enjoy the process.

The paint wheel reveals that each single paint produces a

whole circle of color mixtures, like a bouquet. You learn to
understand paints in these terms, and choose a paint for the
whole bouquet, and not for the color of its "pure" unmixed
blossom.

Paint wheels taught me that I had been plucking the blossoms,

choosing paints that were beautiful in themselves without
concern for how they behaved in mixtures with other paints. My
approach to color became more integrated, and disciplined by an
understanding of how the entire palette works together, rather
than how pretty each color is in itself.

I'll summarize some of the tradeoffs among color and

paint choices that the paint wheel highlights, to suggest how it
can help you in your own color explorations.

Start with yellow. Best is a wide hue contrast, as these can mix
any intermediate yellow without any loss in chroma. One yellow
should be either absolutely neutral (neither red nor green), if
not slightly green (lemon yellow); the other yellow should be far
toward orange, without losing its basic yellow character.

You will come to appreciate the value of the siennas and ochres
in this part of the color space: they anchor a specific muted
yellow or orange, which can be adjusted by mixture with any
other paint on the palette. Getting that muted mixture with
saturated paints is harder than it might seem!

Good choices for light yellow are cadmium lemon or cadmium

yellow pale; hansa yellow light, benzimida yellow, hansa yellow
or green gold. The light yellow should produce greens that are
bright yet natural across all the hues from green yellow to blue
green. In that context I found bismuth yellow was too intense,
and the various forms of nickel titanate yellow too dull.

Good choices for the orange yellow or yellow orange are

cadmium yellow deep, hansa yellow deep, isoindolinone yellow. I
found nickel dioxine yellow (PY153) gives very nice results.
The deep yellow should be capable of mixing handsome greens
with all the blue paints. If it produces a warm rather than
greenish mixture with the blue violet (ultramarine), then your
choice of deep yellow is too far toward orange.

Yellow is also the paint color that is fraught with many fugitive
pigments, especially in the cheaper or lower quality brands of
paint. Use the guide to watercolor pigments to check
pigment lightfastness and avoid paints that contain
impermanent pigments.

With two yellows, there are 10 slots remaining in the wheel.

Reds can be contrasted primarily on hue,

chroma and to a lesser degree on lightness. There are few
texture variations among red or crimson pigments, and nearly
all red paints (other than the quinacridones) are at least partially
opaque.

The red orange hue (next to the deep yellow) is only

represented by a handful of pigments. A medium orange such as
benzimidazolone orange is too similar to the deep yellow and
tends to be too light valued. I found perinone orange (PO43)
made interesting mixtures, but is not quite lightfast enough; and
mixtures with pyrrole orange (PO73) are unexpectedly dull
(diagnostic trick to remember: the orange shifts toward blue as
you dilute it). All in all, cadmium red orange (PR108) is a
very intense color, slightly lighter valued, and a beautiful mixer.
(Winsor & Newton cadmium scarlet or Holbein cadmium red
orange are closest to the most desirable hue.)

The paint you choose should produce handsome ochres and

browns in mixtures with green paints, and should deliver a solid
neutral gray in mixture with the complementary hue (teal blue).

There is a very large selection of red paints, and these divide

into two types of red: the "spectrum" reds that contain no
"blue" reflectance, and the "blue" reds that do provide "blue"
reflectance, even when the paint color shows no blue tint (e.g.,
perylene maroon, PR179). Again, a useful diagnostic trick is
to see whether the diluted tint of the paint seems to shift the
color toward yellow ("spectrum" red) or toward violet ("blue"
red).

If you choose a "spectrum" red, then violet mixtures will be

quite dark, although the orange and yellow mixtures should be
suitably saturated; however many "blue" reds mix quite
saturated colors with a good yellow paint: note the mixture of
quinacridone magenta and aureolin in the paint wheel shown at
the top of this section. I think the choice therefore depends on
whether you want to reproduce the violet mixtures you get with
a blue red, or go for somber maroons and dusky violets with the
"spectrum" red.

Back to the paint selection: cadmium red deep (PR108) is

perhaps the best "spectrum" red choice, and quinacridone red
(PR209) or quinacridone carmine (PR N/A) the best "blue"
red. Vermilion or scarlet hues will be too close to the red orange,
the lighter valued rose or carmine pigments will be too pink, and
the brilliant pyrrole red (PR254), a blue red, is for me too
strident. As with the yellow paints, the reds and violet reds are
profuse with impermanent pigment choices, so make sure to use
lightfast alternatives.

For the violet red (magenta), I don't believe there is a better

choice than quinacridone magenta (PR122) — it produces
saturated mixtures on both the violet and the orange side —
though I often like the darker mixtures that quinacridone
violet (PV19) can create. But quinacridone rose (PV19R) is
an extremely flexible and beautiful color, though not quite as
lightfast as the first two choices.

There is good separation in hue, lightness and chroma between

cadmium red orange, quinacridone red and quinacridone
magenta. But it is remarkably difficult to get real variety in
warm color mixtures if you stick with saturated red, orange and
yellow paints. The alternative is to choose a more muted paint
(such as perylene maroon) for the "red" slot, and get a bright
red by the mixture of quinacridone magenta and cadmium red
orange.

The yellow orange red crimson magenta mixtures must generate

effective contrast among themselves, pulling new color
harmonies from all the others. If all these contrasts work, there
will be a rich variety across all the left side color mixtures.

Two yellows and three reds leaves seven slots to fill.

The violet slot is either a red or a blue violet, and this

biases the color mixtures in the lower half of the wheel. The
pigment selections here are drastically limited, and many violet
paints are in fact convenience mixtures of a magenta and violet
blue.

In their working palettes, many artists omit a violet paint

entirely, mixing all their violets from ultramarine blue and
quinacridone rose or quinacridone magenta. It's useful to keep
this alternative in mind, even though a paint wheel requires one
violet pigment.

I have to recommend dioxazine violet (PV23) by default, for

the blues it can pull all the way into the greens, and the deep
browns it creates with the reds. Both cobalt violet deep or
manganese violet are reasonable middle violet pigments, but
each has a relatively weak tinting strength and an intriguing but
sometimes assertive texture.

This fills six slots. The remaining six slots will be blues and
greens.

There are many shades of green possible by

mixing the blues with the two yellows, so one or two greens is
enough (and in a working palette using no green at all is
feasible).

If two greens, then the contrast can be in hue (one blue green
and one yellow green), or in chroma and transparency (a
phthalo green and a cobalt or chromium green). There are not a
lot of attractive green pigments to choose from: viridian
(PG18) is worth trying, though I found it too dull and weak in
mixtures to suit my taste. The anhydrous yellow green
alternative, chromium oxide green (PG17) has by contrast a
high tinting strength, but is very dark and dull (though it works
extremely well in diluted mixtures, due to its unique triple peak
reflectance curve and powdery, cadmiumlike texture). The cobalt
greens used to strike me as forbiddingly opaque, but I
discovered that they can be poetic and flexible when used at
higher dilutions and as part of an earth palette.

A reliable basic choice is phthalo green BS (PG7) for a blue

green, phthalo green YS (PG36) for a middle green, and a
convenience mixture labeled sap green or phthalo yellow
green for the yellow green.

The point of using three greens is that the extent of green hues
in the perceptual hue circle is in fact about 1/4 of the total
circumference; and you will find that trying to match these
green hues is actuall rather difficult. The difficulty will lead you
to appreciate the many convenience greens, which, like the
earth pigments, provide a stable and reliable green color that
can be adjusted by mixture with any other paint on the palette.

This leaves three hues of blue to finish. As with green and

violet, there is a rather limited pigment choice here: mostly
cobalts and phthalos, with ultramarine blue and iron blue as the
outliers.

The various shades of blue must mix well with both the yellows
and the magentas, and this reinforces the point that the yellows
and cool reds should also contrast and mix well together. (For
example, quinacridone red and quinacridone magenta work well
with aureolin and indian yellow.)

For a violet blue, it seems impossible to avoid the choice of

either ultramarine blue (PB29) or cobalt blue (PB28). Look
at your mixtures with yellow, red and magenta to decide
between them: if you require bright violets and good tinting
strength, then ultramarine is probably better. Cobalt blue is
muted, but it can be stunning with other muted and transparent
paints.

Phthalo blue GS (PB15:3), iron blue (PB27) or cerulean blue

(PB35) are the principal choices for the middle blue paint. I
prefer that this blue mix to a dark neutral with the red orange
paint (spoke 3), yet make clean color mixtures with the warm
yellow (spoke 2) and the red (spoke 4). This makes cerulean
blue less desirable, though for some landscape or portrait
palettes it can be essential, and its granulation is very evocative.

Finally, for the green blue, there are a handful of choices: cobalt
turquoise, "marine" shades of phthalocyanine, or the marvelous
manganese blue. I chose cobalt teal (PG50) because it
produces a subtle granulation and lovely color in mixtures with
every other paint on the wheel — including a lustrous violet gray
with quinacridone magenta. Manganese blue is less green — a
good choice if you like its strong granular texture. phthalo
turquoise is quite dark and somewhat dull.

The blues must work well with the yellow green, the yellows, the
red/orange, and the magentas. Typically almost any blue works
fine with dioxazine violet, the greens, and all other blues.

The diagram below illustrates some basic points of the color

landscape, as revealed in a paint wheel. These are the long
spokes of the paint wheel shown below, aligned side by side.
The top segment in each spoke is the pure paint color for each
color point; the large middle segment was mixed by the
adjacent pure paints on either side (which are 60° apart on the
hue circle); the large bottom segment by the paints two steps
on either side (which are 120° apart on the hue circle); and the
short bottom segment by paints on opposite sides (180° apart
on the hue circle).

variations in color mixture around the hue circle

The three additive "primary" hues — orange red (R), blue violet
(B) and green (G) — reproduce quite well. In effect, subtractive
mixture between any two randomly chosen paints tends to
produce an orange, green or blue color.

The red additive primary combines poorly with both the blue and
the green, producing two areas of dark color mixture around
yellow (Y) and magenta (M). The reasons for this are not the
same. The yellow darkening is due to the strong dependence of
yellow appearance on high lightness (yellow reflectance, by
itself, cannot produce a bright yellow color). The magenta
darkening is caused by mixing two colors (blue violet and red)
that are both at the darkened extremes of the spectrum (and
therefore dark to begin with), and by using a "spectrum" red
that reflects no "blue" light; it can be somewhat reduced by
using a blue red (quinacridone red) instead.

The orange mixtures by contrast are neatly arranged by hue and

chroma, in part because hue and lightness are closely associated
in yellow to red hues (as colors shift from yellow to red, they
become darker), and in part because the large variety of
pigments available for these hues makes it easy to find pigments
for almost any hue that have both high chroma and very
compatible handling attributes (particle size, transparency,
specific gravity).

In contrast, there is a great variety and something of a jumble

among the green and blue mixtures, in part because there is no
clear relationship between hue and lightness among the greens
(blues become darker as their hue shifts toward violet), and
because there is a much smaller range of blue or green
pigments to choose from, which forces greater differences in
lightness, chroma and handling attributes among these paints.
This makes it much more difficult to match the green or blue
hue mixed by one pair of paints with the color mixed by a
different pair — a challenge you will experience most clearly with
the green mixtures, especially if you work with cobalt pigments.

The unsaturated color zones — the dull colors that contrast so

strongly with their hues (yellow, orange, red) that they have
completely different color names — appear as the greens
underneath yellow, the brown underneath deep yellow, and then
the browns and sepias in the short swatches under red orange
and red. In other words, chroma has a very high visual impact
on color mixtures in yellow, but the strength of this contrast
weakens as the hue shifts into red.

The colors along the very bottom, all the way around the paint
wheel, appear to be simply variations of black, brown or green.
This illustrates the general principle that, as colors become more
desaturated, the visual contrasts among them reduces to light
vs. dark and warm vs. cool, which is visually often just the
contrast brown vs. grue (green plus blue). Just as red, green
and blue emerge across a wide span of mixtures, they anchor
our sense of hue in colors close to gray.

These are among the most basic and important features of the
color landscape using today's commercial paints. Understanding
them will greatly increase your color mixing skills.

My color education is ongoing, so I'd like to close

with the paint recommendations I'd make today for each of the
12 color points. (Contrast with the pigment locations in the
artist's color wheel.) The mixing paint wheel shown below was
painted with effort to match the hues within each spoke.

1 cadmium yellow (pale or lemon) PY35

2 isoindolinone yellow PY110
3 cadmium red orange PO20+PR108
4 cadmium red deep PR108
5 quinacridone magenta PR122
6 dioxazine violet PV23
7 ultramarine blue PB29
8 phthalo blue GS PB15
9 cobalt teal PG50
10 phthalo green BS PG7
11 phthalo green YS PG36
12 phthalo yellow green PG36+PY150

I mix my own phthalo yellow green as 1 part phthalo green YS

and about 6 parts nickel dioxine yellow. I don't use the yellow
paint anywhere else, so this mixture increases the color variety.

These 12 paints are probably not the best working palette and
certainly not the optimal basic palette, both in terms of mixing
convenience (no earth pigments) and paint lightfastness
(depending on paint brand, the violet may fade). But it is a
useful selection for exploring the varieties of hue, value range,
texture, staining, tinting strength, transparency, handling
attributes and mixing behavior of paints from all parts of the
color wheel.

Whatever selection of paints you decide to use, paint wheels

help clarify some fundamental features of the color mixing
landscape: the difficulty of matching specific hues in green
mixtures; the very dark mixtures produced by
"spectrum" reds and blue paints; the dark mixtures produced
by oranges and greens; the deep blacks produced by reds and
greens; and so on. It also makes very evident the differences
between pigments in hiding power and tinting strength, and
the difficulty in judging color mixtures with cadmium or cobalt
pigments and most synthetic organic pigments (the cadmiums
and cobalts sink quickly out of a mixture, and to the bottom of a
juicy paint layer, disguising their influence in the dried paint
layer).

Finally, look over the mixed colors in your wheel and tally up the
paints your mixtures appear to duplicate. For example, the
wheel shown at the top of the page gives convincing substitutes
for paints such as alizarin crimson, permanent green, thioindigo
violet, cerulean blue, indanthrone blue, cadmium red,
quinacridone maroon, raw umber, and hooker's green, among
many others. These you could do without. By identifying the
color location of these dispensible paints, you learn to reproduce
the color at will from the actual paints on your palette.

The paint wheel helps you visualize the relationships among

different paints, the tradeoffs in choosing one paint over
another, and the paint combinations that create the widest and
most attractive mixing possibilities.

Color is something you should explore for yourself by painting.

It's really the only way to learn.

Good luck!

Last revised 08.I.2015 • © 2015 Bruce MacEvoy