Colour

Artists can use colour to create many effects in their paintings. It can be used to evoke feelings such as a warm summer's day or a cold winter's day, or to capture moments like the dark clouds of a storm.

Artists use colour wheels to organise colours. Colours are grouped into primary colours, secondary colours, and the tertiary colours. The primary colours are yellow, blue and red. These can be mixed together to make the secondary colours. The secondary colours are orange (yellow + red), green (yellow + blue) and violet (blue + red). The tertiary colours are made by mixing the primary and secondary colours together - yellow + orange, red + orange, red + purple, blue + purple, blue + green and yellow + green.

Colour Wheel - Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Colour Wheel - Warm and Cool Colours

These groups show artists the colours that are similar, and that are different, and the colours that 'compliment' each other - which means they look good together. The complementary colours are opposite each other on the colour wheel, such as red and green, or blue and orange. By choosing to use colours which are very similar or very different, artists can create pictures that communicate their ideas and feelings.

These colours can also be grouped into warm and cool colours. Red orange and yellow are warm colours. Blue, violet and grey are cool colours.

In this painting called Mariana by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the artist has used strong primary colours of red and blue to make a colourful image.

This painting by Bessie MacNicol is called Autumn.

The artist has used colour to depict the season Autumn, with brown and gold leaves and bright sunlight making patterns on the girl in the picture.

Lunga from Iona by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell © Artist's Estate, c/o Portland Gallery, London.

This painting is called Lunga from Iona. It was painted by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell and shows the Scottish island of Iona.

In the scene the artist has used strong, vibrant colours to capture the sand, sea and sky on a bright day.

This painting by Joseph Farquharson is called Afterglow and was painted in 1912. It is a painting of a forest in Deeside in Scotland.

The artist has used colour to capture a winter scene. The pink glow in the evening sky and the bluish shadows cast on the snow-covered woodland help make the picture look cool and wintery.