Color Wheel

Recently, one of my facebook friends, Holly Gage, who also happens to be a very talented metal clay artist, shared this color wheel site with us.  It was so good, I had to share it.  But I also thought, how much fun it would be to find examples and share it in my blog!  So of course, I went browsing through the pages of the Jewelry Creators Unite in Numbers (JCUIN) guild on Artfire to find some.

First of all, here is the color wheel site.  It's awesome.

http://colorschemedesigner.com/

You will see color schemes across the top shown as little wheel icons.  Below on the left is the color wheel, and your color(s) are selected here.  The color scheme in the colors you selected is shown on the lower right.

The first example I found was a monochrome in green.  This was perfect since monochrome is the first color scheme.  Since "mono" means one (in Latin, I presume?), it would make sense the monochrome means basically one color.  Here is "Jasper leaf with crystals and glass jasper nuggets" by 4Essentials:

 

Second is a complimentary design.  This means using two colors that are opposite of each other on the color wheel.  I found a perfect example in red and green in "Holly and Ivy, Czech Bead Bracelet," by Katyanne of Jewel Fire Designs:

Next is a triad color scheme.  Similar to complimentary, except that instead of using the complimentary color of the first color, you use the color on each side of it.  The following bracelet, "Sterling Silver Charm Bracelet With Pink and White Pearls", by Bluetina, is a perfect example.  The compliment of the green crystals would be red, but instead the artist used the colors on either side of red, peach and pink:

I wasn't sure I could find an example of the next color scheme, but I think I have a winner.  This is as close as I can get to an example of a tetrad.  That is two sets of complimentary colors and I found it (sort of) in "Multicolor Earrings, Prayer Flag Inspired," by Pretty Gonzo.  As you can see, we have red and green, and the yellow jade is sort of a peach, which is a compliment of the blue:

An analogic color scheme is using three colors in a row on the color wheel.  Jill's Jewelry has a very good example of analogic in her "Multi Blue Bracelet".  It uses blue, turquoise and green for a great seascape effect:

Finally, the last color scheme is accented analogic.  I just could not find a good example of this one.  Like analogic, you use three consecutive colors, but you accent it with the color that is the opposite of the middle of the three.  In our previous analogic example, since the turquoise is the center color of the three, we would accent it with the opposite of turquoise, which would be orange.  Since I couldn't find one, I just had to make one.  I chose my favorite three consecutive colors - blue, purple and pink and accented them with the color across from purple, which is yellow.  In this case, I used all pastel colors to make my "Cotton Candy Butterfly Bracelet":



If you want to do some more exploring with colors, take a look at my Artfire collection, Color Craze, and see if you can tell what color scheme each artist was using.  There are a couple I can't figure out.  And I hope you have fun playing with the color wheel.