It’s easy to mix paints to make new colours. You can use the primary colours (red, blue, and yellow) plus black and white to get all of the colours of the rainbow

The colour wheel

The colour wheel shows the relationships between the colours.

The three primary colours are red, yellow, and blue; they are the only colours that cannot be made by mixing two other colours.

The three secondary colours are green, orange, and violet; they are each a mixture of two primary colours.

Their hue is half way between the two primary colours that were used to mix them.

On the colour wheel, the secondary colours are located between the colours they are made from.

The six tertiary colours (red-orange, red-violet, yellow-green, yellow-orange, blue-green and blue-violet) are made by mixing a primary colour with an adjacent secondary colour.

On the colour wheel, the tertiary colours are located between the primary and secondary colours they are made from.

Black, white and grey are not true colours. They are considered to be neutral, achromatic colours. Value refers to how light or dark a colour appears.

Making colours lighter or darker

To make a colour lighter in value, add white. The more white you add, the lighter the colour will get.

This is called a tint of the original colour. For example, pink is a tint of red.

To make a colour darker (this is called a shade of the original colour), add a small amount of black. Maroon is a shade of red.

If you add too much black, your colour will be almost black. Another way to darken a colour is to mix in some of the complementary colour (the opposite colour on a colour wheel – see above).

This produces a rich, dark colour (richer than just adding black).

Some pairs of complementary colours are: blue/orange, green/red, yellow/purple, black/white.