The MOST PRACTICAL Color Wheel
Buy Your Way to Perfect Neutrals
When it comes to color wheels, things get a bit too basic especially for beginning artists. When I was first learning about color theory I stumbled upon a book by artist STEPHEN QUILLER called COLOR CHOICES. And I’m so glad I did. Not only did it contain a thorough exploration of color theory and how it was applied but it also contained a detachable color guide that was created using real-world paints that could be purchased. This was incredibly helpful to keep me from buying random “BLUES”, “YELLOWS” and “REDS”. Which in the end would have been incredibly frustrating.
While painting with color is a great and powerful thing, KNOWING the properties and behavior of colors and how they interact to mix brilliant colors as well as perfect neutrals will expand your toolkit.
Many color wheels look like any combination of these:
And while they can be helpful, they’re also very generic, verging on useless when you start down the path of color mixing.
If you’ve been following my Youtube series on the PRINCIPLES OF COLOR THEORY at Beyond the Process, you’ll get a better understanding of how to build your skills up from the ground floor. Using the Quiller Wheel you can color pick digitally to get a fairly close approximation of color in painting programs like REBELLE, KRITA (opensource), and PAINTSTORM that have their own mixing palettes. Otherwise feel free to purchase the colors according to their labels from places like Dick Blick or your favorite local art store.
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