If you know the hue, lightness and chroma of any paint, you will have a pretty good idea of how that paint will mix with other paints. So part of the basic knowledge of any painter is knowing the location of the major pigments in relation to the twelve major points of the color wheel. Let's take the tour.  

1 : LIGHT YELLOW (primary) : This hue is a tangy, bright yellow, the color of lemons and canaries, which often takes on a distinct greenish appearance, especially at darker values. It corresponds to the spectral hue at around 575nm. The visual color wheel locates hansa yellow light (PY3), cadmium lemon (PY35) and the benzimidazolone yellows (PY151, PY154, or PY175) at the "primary" yellow point. Artists differ in how much green they prefer in this hue; the Munsell color circle picks a very lemony yellow as the exemplar. My own preference is for hansa yellow (PY97) because it is very lightfast, intense, and has a hue that contains (to my eye) no hint of orange or green. The historical pigment aureolin (PY40, not shown because it is impermanent) is a slightly cooler and less intense yellow, while bismuth yellow (PY184) is whiter and therefore less intense than the usual cadmium lemon. Copper azomethine or green gold (PY117) and nickel titanate (PY53) are relatively dull light yellows and therefore less suitable as a primary mixing paint; all have a distinct green or greenish gray color. All yellows at this color point quickly lose their characteristic yellow appearance as they are darkened or made less intense, turning rapidly into a dull warm green and then into a peculiarly lifeless gray. Note that none of these yellows can be used in neutralizing mixtures with blue violet; they all make dull greens.  

2 : DEEP YELLOW (tertiary) : This is the golden color of highway caution signs, school buses and autumn squash. It corresponds to the spectral hue at around 585nm. The visual wheel places hansa yellow deep (PY65), cadmium yellow deep (PY35) and nickel dioxine yellow (PY153) at this location, but many cadmium paints labeled yellow orange or yellow medium are also close to this hue. (The Munsell Book of Color chooses a color slightly warmer than cadmium yellow deep for this hue location.) A less intense but very lovely alternative is quinacridone deep gold (PO49). This second hue point is interesting for several reasons. Mixing the hue from yellow and red produces a duller mixture than expected, often duller than a red orange mixed from the same paints. This is also the yellowest hue that can neutralize mixtures with blue violet; mixing complements for cool colors really start at this hue point and continue through purple. Finally, this is the hue point at which the yellowest earth pigments are located — the many "yellow" iron oxide pigments (PY42 or PY43, marketed as raw sienna, yellow ochre, mars yellow or gold ochre). If this hue is made even less intense, it turns into a grayish or grayish brown hue, typical of raw umber (PBr7). A handy way to remember the yellow range of the spectrum is to remember that most "medium" cadmium yellows are about half the distance from cadmium yellow deep to hansa yellow light, and hansa yellow medium (PY97) is about half the distance from cadmium medium to hansa yellow light.  

3 : RED ORANGE (secondary) : This is an especially intense and powerful hue, just at the boundary between scarlet and orange (hues on either side of this hue point). It corresponds to the spectral hue at around 620nm. The best exemplars of this color are perinone orange (PO43) or pyrrole orange (PO73), although I really like a slightly warmer cadmium scarlet (PR108) or cadmium red orange (PR108). The less intense pigments in this color category include the "red" iron oxide pigments (including venetian red, indian red and light red, all PR101) and the synthetic organic equivalent quinacridone maroon (PR206; Daniel Smith's quinacridone burnt scarlet and Winsor & Newton's brown madder). It's also important to familiarize yourself with the pigments that fall between the deep yellow and red orange color points: cadmium orange (PO20) and benzimidazolone orange (PO62) are the most intense, while among the duller but very useful paints are quinacridone gold (PO48) and the extremely useful burnt sienna (PBr7), a moderately dull, orange iron oxide pigment that is a mixing keystone in the "warm" color range. Even darker and less intense is burnt umber (PBr7), which can be used in place of burnt sienna in any mixture that you want to take to a darker and duller color (although it is oddly ineffective at mixing true grays with most blue paints). Naphthol scarlet (PR188) and pyrrole scarlet (PR255) are very intense pigments on the red side of this color point. It's interesting that artists tend to have a distinctive preference in warm paints: some (Caravaggio, Turner, Gauguin, Matisse) seem to like red orange focal hues, while others (Van Gogh, Reubens, Rembrandt) seem to prefer a deep yellow.  

4 : MIDDLE RED (tertiary) : This is close to a "pure" red that leans neither toward orange nor violet. Its closest monochromatic counterpart is in the extreme red, around 720nm. The visual color wheel places quinacridone carmine (PR N/A) or the historical pigment alizarin crimson (PR83, not shown because it is fugitive) close to this location. Notice that cadmium red medium (PR108) and pyrrole red (PR254) are close by, and the range from scarlet to deep red is visually quite small — about the same as the distance between the yellow and green shades of phthalo green. And there is quite a crowd of "warm red" pigment alternatives between the red orange and red points on the wheel. These include the cadmium reds (PR108), naphthol reds (PR112 and PR170), quinacridone reds (PR209 and PV19), perylene scarlet (PR149), perylene red (PR178), perylene maroon (PR179). Notice that in the visual color wheel the red and yellow spans of the spectrum are approximately the same size: deep yellow is the middle boundary between the two. Most of these reds mix strong blacks with phthalo green BS (PG7), and strong dark grays with cobalt turquoise or teal blue. I find it useful to divide the warm colors in two groups — the paints that can or cannot mix a green color with a greenish blue paint such as phthalo cyan or phthalo blue GS. Yellows up to cadmium yellow deep can, and reds up to benzimidazolone orange cannot.  

5 : MAGENTA (primary) : This is a distinctive bright, bluish red hue that is easy to recognize once you've seen it, and the best choice among existing pigments for a "primary" magenta color. It has no spectral counterpart, but is obtained by mixing roughly equal parts of "red" and "blue violet" wavelengths. An excellent choice for this point is the Winsor & Newton brand of quinacridone magenta (PR122); other paints sold under that name tend to be slightly darker and duller, but also have a bluer hue. Permanent rose (PV19) is a slightly warmer hue; don't be confused by the fact that this pigment also comes in a noticeably redder shade, sometimes sold under the name quinacridone red. Quinacridone violet (PV19) is much darker but with a rich bluish luster when wet. It's remarkable that the entire color span from middle red to red violet, formerly represented by a shoddy gang of fugitive organic pigments, has been handsomely replaced by different shades of a single modern and lightfast pigment: quinacridone. Manganese (mineral) violet (PV16) could be placed at this color point, but it is too blue and too dull to make useful mixtures with the warm pigments. (I don't consider the hues from quinacridone magenta to ultramarine blue, and the complements from phthalo green YS to cadmium lemon, to be either warm or cool.) Thioindigo violet (PR88) belongs at this point on the visual wheel; though too dark and dull to make a suitable "primary" color, it mixes lovely dark violets, oranges and browns. Some "accomplished" artists continue to use the fugitive magenta and carmine pigments, including alizarin crimson and rose madder genuine. But apparently they do so with a furtive conscience: posing as an interested buyer, I've found that a few don't notify their collectors of the lightfastness issues related to their choice of paints.  

6 : RED VIOLET (tertiary) : A relatively rare hue encountered most often in certain flowers or gems. It has no spectral counterpart, but is obtained by mixing "red" and "blue violet" wavelengths. This location can be represented by either dioxazine violet (PV23) or cobalt violet deep (blue shade), depending on whether you want a red or blue bias to the hue. Note that cobalt violet also comes in a redder shade that is lighter valued but similar to manganese violet. Few artists use these pigments because they have poor tinting strength, are not especially bright, and are strongly granulating. There is a lack of effective pigment alternatives for this hue because nearly all natural and synthetic pigment choices are fugitive; to avoid these problems many paint brands offer the color as a convenience mixture of a rose or magenta quinacridone and ultramarine blue. Points 5 through 7 of the wheel are also confusing to learn because the apparent hue of a paint depends on its lightness and/or chroma: magenta paints appear to redden with increased chroma, and blue violet paints appear to shift toward purple. This is especially noticeable in quinacridone violet (PV19), which has the same spectrophotometric hue as quinacridone magenta (PR122), but appears distinctly bluer because the color is darker and less intense. A similar hue difference appears between indanthrone blue (PB60) and ultramarine blue (PB29).  

7 : BLUE VIOLET (secondary) : Here we enter the blue hues, corresponding to the spectral hue at around 450nm. Cobalt blue is the best visual complement for "primary" yellows at point 1 (ultramarine blue actually matches up visually with a greenish yellow color), but artists are sometimes confused by the mixing complementary relations, which match up cobalt, phthalo or cyan blue to an orange or scarlet paint. The compromise is usually to shift all the blues counterclockwise, so that ultramarine blue aligns with point 7, phthalo blue with point 8, and phthalo cyan and turquoise with point 9 (the "primary" cyan spot). The visual wheel identifies cobalt blue (PB28) or a red shade of phthalo blue (PB15) as the representatives of this hue point, but most color wheels prefer ultramarine blue (PB29). A beautiful pigment at this point is indanthrone blue (PB60), dark and dull, which makes a superb substitute for "indigo" convenience mixtures and mixes beautiful darks with benzimidazolone orange. The nearness of ultramarine blue to a violet color is revealed by the fact that ultramarine violet (PV15) is very close by. The mixing complements of blue paints tend to change inconsistently from one blue to the next, but some good dark mixtures are possible, especially with the ultramarine blue, the phthalo paints and prussian blue.  

8 : MIDDLE BLUE (tertiary) : An unusual hue in nature, as sky blue falls between color points 8 and 9. It corresponds to the spectral hue at around 480nm, which is exactly the wavelength of maximum transmission (and therefore the color) of pure water, but most natural bodies of water contain suspended matter that shifts the color toward green or brown. The visual wheel puts cerulean blue (PB35) or a green shade of phthalo blue (PB15:3) approximately at this color point. Pay special attention to brand variations in color when selecting paints around points 8 and 9 on the color wheel, including cerulean blue (PB35 or PB36) and phthalo blue (PB15). If you shift the blues counterclockwise (as described under color point 7), then cobalt blue (PB28) may also work for this color point, especially if a bluish ultramarine violet is chosen for point 7. Mixing complements for the blues at point 8 are primarily deep oranges and scarlets, as well as their dull "earth" palette equivalents.  

9 : CYAN (primary) : This is a bright, light greenish blue, also unmistakable once learned, representing the "primary" cyan in paint mixing. It corresponds to the spectral hue at around 490nm. For that hue there is one good pigment choice — Holbein's peacock blue (PB17) — although a very green phthalo blue (PB15:3) or even the very dark phthalo turquoise (PB16) would also serve well, depending on your palette requirements. Manganese blue (PB33) is more granular but almost identical in hue, and many cerulean blue paints (PB36) are also close to a cyan hue, though less intense and also less transparent.  

10 : BLUE GREEN (tertiary) : This hue, called "sea green" (meer graun) by the Germans, is peculiarly neglected by most artists. It corresponds to the spectral hue at around 500nm. The visual color wheel places dark and dull cobalt turquoise (PB36) and brighter cobalt turquoise light (PG50, one of my favorite paints) at this location. But most paint companies either do not offer any paint of this hue, or provide a convenience mixture made from phthalo blue and phthalo green. There is, in any case, no pigment other than cobalt (or a convenience mixture) that can match this color. The mixing complements for this point are also among the visual complementary colors (middle or deep red), and the fact that red and blue green are such strongly antagonistic colors in color vision (lying at opposite ends of the r/g opponent contrast) means that many of the neutral mixtures are especially dark and intense.  

11 : GREEN (secondary) : This green corresponds to the spectral hue at around 540nm. The visual color wheel puts phthalo green yellow shade (PG36) exactly at this point, and chromatically that has the highest loading of green (a-) visual stimulation of any available pigment. However, in keeping with some artists' preference to shift the blue stuff counterclockwise, phthalo green blue shade (PG7), darker and with higher tinting strength, is often chosen instead, and it is perhaps a better visual complement to quinacridone magenta (thioindigo violet is the exact visual complement to phthalo green yellow shade). Viridian (PG18) is visually identical in hue to phthalo green blue shade, and Winsor & Newton markets a relatively bright version of cobalt green (cobalt titanate, PG50) at this hue, as well. But be warned: all the other paints named cobalt green are weakly tinting or dull colors that few artists other than botanical painters use. (The pros and cons of these and other green pigments are dished up in the page on mixing green.)  

12 : YELLOW GREEN (tertiary) : To close out the color wheel, there is a long slog of green and more green until we come back to cadmium lemon. This yellow green corresponds to the spectral hue at around 565nm. Yellow green is an unpopular color in everything from clothing to cars to home decor, and there are few pigments available to provide it: chromium oxide green (PG17, the pigment used to make camouflage paints) is the only lightfast pigment at this color point. Nearly all the commonly used paints at this color point are actually green convenience mixtures. The most intense choice is a very yellow shade of permanent green light (listed as a convenience mixture under PG7), but I find sap green (listed as a convenience mixture under PG36) is more convenient to use, and it is also an excellent mixing and visual complement for dioxazine violet. It's surprising to recognize that the distance on the visual color wheel between phthalocyanine green yellow shade and cadmium lemon is the same as that between ultramarine blue and quinacridone magenta, the visual complements. And I have actually reduced this space somewhat; it's even larger on the Munsell color circle.

At first reading, this survey of the color wheel seems to cover a confusingly large number of pigments and colors. The differences between scarlet and brown, or yellow and ochre paints — what I call the unsaturated color zones — also complicate color judgments on the "warm" side of the color wheel.

But don't despair. The simple exercise of mixing paint wheels is a great way to learn these color variations and the major color differences that result from mixtures of paints from any two color points. And you will find that painting experience will gradually clarify and strengthen your grasp of the color wheel, and with it your confidence at navigating the complexities of color space.

mixing lines between blue and green pigments and their mixing complementary "warm" pigments

 
Nothing is precise in subtractive color mixing, yet it's obvious the lines from the blue pigments (from the blue shade of ultramarine violet PV15 to cobalt teal blue PG50) all converge on a small area of the wheel located roughly around the pigment red iron oxide (venetian red, PR101). This is indicated by the blue circle.

In contrast, the mixing lines for the few green pigments and convenience mixtures all pass through a small area located near chromium oxide green (PG17), indicated by the green circle.

The reason for these differences is not hard to find, if we consider the reflectance curves of the different paints and the differences between additive and subtractive color mixing.

All the "green mixing" warm pigments (that is, the light yellow to yellow orange paints that will mix a green color with a blue paint) contain significant amounts of "green" reflectance — even though visually they seem to contain no green color. As the paint hue shifts from yellow toward red, this "green" reflectance diminishes, but does not completely disappear until the hue is around a scarlet red.

These "green" reflecting warm pigments are visual complements to paints from cobalt blue to phthalo cyan, and these colors also contain a significant amount of "green" reflectance, even though they appear primarily blue. This "green" reflectance increases as the paint color shifts toward blue green, which compensates for the loss of "green" reflectance as their visual complements shift from yellow to scarlet.

When these blues are mixed with their visual complements, there is enough "green" reflectance common to both paints that the mixtures appear as various dull greens rather than neutral grays.

To remedy this problem and get a true gray, we must neutralize this excess "green" reflectance. We do this by adding the complement of green, magenta. It's exactly as if we mixed the visual complement paints phthalo cyan and benzimidazolone orange, got a dull green color, and realized we needed to add a little magenta paint to neutralize this green toward gray.

So here's the trick: we could also mix the magenta and orange first, which would result in the same gray when mixed with phthalo cyan. But the magenta and orange mixture would itself be close to the pyrrole red that is the mixing complement of phthalo cyan. The difference in hue between the visual and mixing complements represents this added "red" or "magenta" reflectance, and is the reason why the convergence point for the mixing lines is shifted away from the center of the wheel toward a magenta hue.

For the green to blue green paints that are visual complements to blue violet, purple or red violet colors, the problem arises from an excess of "red" and "blue violet" reflectance that magentas and red violets all have in common. In these cases mixing the visual complements gives a dull blue violet color. Now we have to choose a mixing complement to neutralize this "purple" reflectance, and yellow green will do that nicely. It's as if we mixed the visual complements, for example phthalo green BS and quinacridone magenta, got a dark violet as a result, and had to add a little yellow green paint to the mixture to neutralize it back to gray.

This comparison of visual and mixing wheels leaves us with these three rules for mixing complements:

(1) You can ignore the yellow paints from cadmium lemon up to hansa yellow deep; they are not effective mixing complements with any cool pigment.

(2) All blues, from ultramarine violet BS to cobalt teal blue, form mixing complements with paints from hansa yellow deep to middle red, indicated by lines converging on the blue circle. In general, dull (low chroma) warm pigments, such as quinacridone maroon or raw umber, are more effective neutralizing paints than very intense pigments.

(3) All greens, from phthalo green BS to sap green, form mixing complements with paints from deep red to violet, indicated by lines passing through the green circle; the yellow greens can all be neutralized with dioxazine violet.

The simplest way to remember the mixing complementary relationships in the paints you use is just to memorize the best neutralizing pigment for each blue or green pigment from the table of mixing complements. The blue and green circles can help you to find the most likely mixing complements for any cool mixture, if you can identify the location of the mixture on the artist's color wheel (or the existing blue paint it most resembles).

When you do this, you will keep the information about colors or paints that is necessary to solve a specific artistic problem (identifying mixing complements; identifying paints that mix well together), and throw away the rest.

Your personal color wheel start with the actual selection of paints in your palette. You won't include as many pigments as the scientific or generalist color wheels I've described on this and the previous page.

Any artist can make their own color wheel by following these five steps:

1. Decide on the colors (few or many, and specific hues) that will be in the palette — this is the overall palette design.

2. Choose a paint for each hue with the chroma and lightness most appropriate for the total color effect the palette should achieve. (The choice of tonal values determines the relative lightness of all mixed colors and the value range of the palette as a whole.)

3. Choose either visual or mixing color complements as the basic color geometry that the wheel will represent.

4. Position the paints around the color wheel according to their hue or color mixing behavior.

5. Determine the additional information about the paints (if any) to represent by the concentric placement of the paints inside the wheel. (In Quiller's wheel, this extra information is chroma and lightness; in Kosvanec's wheel, it is paint transparency and staining.)

An artist can bring other considerations to designing a color wheel than the ones I've shown (the texture of the paints, or their behavior when they are rewetted or charged with clear water).

By now you should realize that there is no "objective" color wheel, no "best" color palette. There are many color wheels and palettes, each one suited to a particular artist or artistic purpose. By working through the steps just described, you can make your own color wheel.

Art means you do it whatever way makes sense for you. One of the pleasureful puzzles of painting is the process of continually rediscovering your personal color wheel, rather than memorizing somebody else's "perfect" color system.