Online Art Lesson Plan on the Color Wheel Chart

Art Instruction for Students on Color Mixing for Fine Art Painting

Dec 5, 2009 Rachel Shirley

It is vital that art students include the primary colors within their palettes when learning to paint, or their color mixes may turn out muddy.

When teaching art, the teacher must incorporate color theory into her painting courses. For this purpose, the art teacher may devise a lesson plan on the meaning of primary colors and how they mix within the preliminary stages of the scheme of work on painting.

What are the Primary Colors?

The art lesson may begin with a question and answer session to get the students engaged, starting with simple questions and progressing onto matters that require in-depth exploration.

The questions may be thus:

• What are the primary colors?
• What is the definition of a primary color?
• What are the secondary colors?
• What is the definition of a secondary color?

Art Activities Exploring the True Primary Colors

The teacher may assign the students research into definitions which remain unclear to students and which may provoke a discussion.

The lesson may progress into a practical painting exercise on color mixing by using the relevant painting materials. The students may mix two apparent primary colors, for example, cadmium red and French ultramarine. A surprise will be in store when purple does not result, but a muddy grey.

The teacher may question the students why this should happen. The answer will in fact be that impurities exist within natural pigments. Cadmium red contains a little yellow and ultramarine contains a little violet.

Color Mixing When Teaching Art

It can be concluded, therefore, that not just any red, yellow and blue are primary colors. The teacher may go on to explain that the true primaries in terms of printing ink are magenta, cyan and yellow. However, no pigment found in nature will ever be as pure as the colors found in scattered light, because impurities will exist, no matter how small. The best that can be achieved is a close approximation to a pure primary color.

In terms of oil paint, acrylics and watercolours, these labels may not be used because paint manufacturers often use different color labels for the same hue. Students may therefore use the primary colors of printing ink as a guide and compare these hues with those of various paint pigments to find the closest approximation.

Color Pigments in Paints

With the chosen pigments, the students may ascertain the amount of impurities within by mixing two color combinations together. The students may then judge the purity of the resultant secondary color. At this point, the teacher may advise art students to include these primary colors within their palette.

Painting Exercise for Art Class

Art students must understand the color theory in order to achieve clean color mixes. This can be explored via question and answer sessions and research into the definition of primary colors and how they mix. Practical exercises on mixing a given apparent primary color will reveal whether impurities exist within.

Establishing which pigments are closest to the true primary colors, as opposed to any red, yellow and blue, will help the art students achieve clean color mixtures within their artwork. The art teacher may conclude the lesson by advising art students to include these primary colors in their palettes.

The copyright of the article Online Art Lesson Plan on the Color Wheel Chart in Arts Education is owned by Rachel Shirley. Permission to republish Online Art Lesson Plan on the Color Wheel Chart in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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