Traditional Color Wheel Instructions:
Start off by drawing a medium-sized triangle in the center of the paper plate or piece of paper.
Next, take your paintbrush and at the top tip of the triangle, paint a yellow circle.
Rinse off your brush, and paint a blue circle on the bottom left triangle tip. Be sure to rinse your brush very well each time so that your paint colors do not mix when you don’t want them to.
Rinse your brush again and paint a red circle on the bottom right triangle tip.
Label each of your circles with the color and what type of color it is – primary, secondary, or tertiary.
Now you will move on to the secondary colors. Refer to the color wheel in the unit or a color wheel that you find online to see where you will place your secondary colors. You may also need to research how to blend your red, yellow, or blue to create your secondary colors.
Each secondary color will be shown by painting a square in the secondary color.
Label your secondary colors with the color name.
Continue on to your tertiary colors. Again, you may need to refer to the unit or research where to place these tertiary colors on your color wheel and how to mix your paints to create them.
Each tertiary color will be shown by painting a triangle in the tertiary color.
Label your tertiary colors with the color name and tertiary.
Voila! You just created your very own traditional color wheel!
Now that you have completed a traditional color wheel by following specific directions, it’s time to get a bit more creative!
Non-Traditional Color Wheel Instructions:
There are really very few limits or instructions for this part of the activity. This is more of an opportunity to let your creativity shine!
Come up with a different way to express the colors on the color wheel that is entirely different from the color wheel you just created.
In fact, it doesn’t have to look like a ‘wheel’ at all! The only real requirement is that you clearly express each primary, secondary, and tertiary color in your non-traditional color wheel.
You can choose to draw a picture of anything you want and paint it according to the color wheel.
You can choose to do a more abstract color wheel and fill in the entire plate or paper, leaving no white space, so that all the colors slightly blend into each other.
Neither of those ideas appeal to you? Come up with your own creation – let the colors guide and inspire you!
Reflection:
Write a one paragraph (minimum) reflection on this project and your work. Be sure to answer the following questions in your paragraph:
How were your color wheels different? How were they similar?
What inspired you (or made you think of your idea) in your creation of the non-traditional color wheel?
