TERTIARY COLOUR WHEEL / CLOCK MNEMONIC

The 12-STEP or TERTIARY Colour Wheel is a chart of colours or hues of the visible spectrum that show colour relattionships. It is made up of three primary colors, three secondary colors, and six tertiary colors or intermediate colors. Primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) are colors that can not be mixed by any other colors. Secondary colors (purple, green, and orange) are in theory formed by mixing two primary colors together. Tertiary colors (red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green, yellow-green, yellow-orange, and red-orange) are formed by combining a primary color with an adjacent secondary color.

JOHANNES ITTEN'S 3/6/12 STEP COLOUR WHEEL:

primary / secondary / tertiary  

3 ATTRIBUTES OF COLOUR

Hue is generally defined as a pure source of colour, one of the twelve basic colors on the colour wheel. Knowing the root hue allows one to mix the colour that he or she sees using a basic palette. HUE is measured relative to the colour temperature (relative to warm or cool).

Value is the lightness or darkness of the colour relative to white, black, and grey.

Intensity is the brightness or dullness of a colour, often determined by the amount of white or complement has been mixed with it. It is measured relative to the brightest color wheel hue that is closest to the colour. Often the words chroma and saturation are used interchangeably with intensity.

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BETTY EDWARD'S COLOUR CLOCK

YELLOW @ 12 o'clock

VIOLET @ 6 o'clock

Edwards in her 2004 book COLOR (page 49) advises that it is valuable to consistently think of the 12-step tertiary wheel as the face of the 12-piont clock as a visual mnemonic. She places all the warm colours (yellow through red-violet) on the right-hand side in the daylight hours from 12-noon (yellow) to 5 o'clock (red-violet), and the cool colours of the evening hours (violet through yellow-green) on the left-hand side, from 6 o'clock (violet) to 11 (yellow-green).