Color wheel art by Matthew Peterson

Description: Students learned what a color wheel is and how to mix colors using primary colors. They studied and learned a foolproof way to simplify the process of choosing colors that worked in harmony with each other.

The students were to find a design for a repeating pattern and then paint each design in a primary, secondary or tertiary color. All the colors on the chart come for mixing primary colors using different ratios of each color, such as mixing two primary colors to create a secondary color and mixing a secondary color with a primary to create a tertiary color. The class also touched on color schemes and tints and values of color, learning basic color theory.

The color wheel is an important tool used by artist because it displays the relationship between colors, it is a handy reference for the artist when putting color combinations together for various projects.

Art teacher Vickey Belmont chose this month’s featured art and why she chose junior Matthew Peterson’s example to post on The Feather.

“Matthew Peterson showed great detail and workmanship in designing his color wheel,”Belmont said. “I’m proud of Matthew for choosing a design that is a little out of his comfort zone. He did a great job on this project.”

Junior Matthew Peterson

With the fate of my art grade on the line, I knew that I had to make this art project a good one. Not knowing where to begin, I jumped on Google to get some inspiration for my masterpiece. Last year I did a similar project but it didn’t turn out like I wanted it too, my painting looked more baguettes instead of biceps, so I knew this year I had to redeem myself.

Learning from my mistakes, I knew that I had to put forth more effort and pay attention to the small details. I started the project design on tracing paper and transferred it to the card stalk with graphite paper. After that, I was able to begin with painting the primary colors and then I mixed the primary colors with the secondary colors to make different colors for the wheel. This process took about a week and a half to complete.

During the few weeks I had to complete the project, I realized that the most time consuming and difficult parts were tracing and filling in small spaces. On the other hand, my favorite part of doing the project was mixing colors to create different shades for the color wheel. Overall, the project was engaging and put my art skills to the test.

For additional information on optical art, check out What is a color wheel? — Definition & Types. Budding artists can get some history easily online. For the previous featured art, check out Featured art, No. 5, 2018-19.