Cruisin' the Color Wheel

NEW: Combo Mambo • Crossover Plates • Contrast Plates • Testing Madness

When you look at a piece for the first time, what do you see? The chances for most people are pretty good that color is one of the first things they'll notice. Most people have favorite colors that they prefer to use, wear, or have around the house, and other colors that they simply won't touch. Our perception of color can change our moods, lift our spirits, and even influence the taste of food. With all of these examples, it's easy to see that we should always pay attention to the colors we use, and how those colors perform with each other -- and with the shapes of the objects we make.

There are many tools or models we can use to talk about color; one of the most useful is the COLOR WHEEL. Instead of a rainbow or a straight line, it's a circle that illustrates how the spectrum comes back around to itself. By picking colors in various positions around the wheel, and understanding how the colors work together, we can use color schemes (planned groups of colors) to our advantage. A full discourse on color theory is beyond the scope of our website. If you'd like to know more, there are dozens of books and websites with professional-grade instruction about color theory. For now, we'd like to present some basic information as a starting point.

(The "G" tiles on this page are made with Georgies G-Mix 6 clay (CC520).)

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Georgies' Glaze Wheel

The color wheel places the three primary colors of red, blue and yellow on the inner circle of the wheel. All other colors are combinations of the primary colors, plus black (which makes shades) and white (which makes tints). The second ring of color, around the outside edge of the wheel, are combinations of the primary colors in various proportions. For example, from PG645 to GLW42 blue + yellow = green... but how much blue? And how much yellow?

Our "Glaze Wheel" presents all of Georgies' cone 6 glazes arranged around in order around the spectrum. In the outer rings, in the tints and shades, the analogy of the color wheel begins to break down. In the world of color mixing for painting (where the color wheel began), tints were created by adding white. It's not that simple in ceramics, where the final color depends on the chemistry of the glaze ingredients at high temperatures. Adding a white pigment to blue + yellow might lighten up the resulting green -- or it may change in unexpected directions! (Sometimes, fortunately, those unexpected directions are really pretty neat in themselves, as illustrated on our Combo Mambo, Crossover and Contrast pages.) To lighten up the glaze color, it may work better to use less pigment in the glaze formula. Or it may work better to change the glaze ingredients to make the glaze more translucent, allowing more light reflection off the clay body under the glaze.

At cone 6 temperatures, the glaze and the clay body interact -- they work on each other -- as the glaze fuses with the clay body. This two-way reaction can also change the final color. (See our Testing Madness page for examples.) Texture on the clay surface can also change the color, by reducing the thickness of the glaze in places. Many of our glazes in the GLW Sculptural/Textural line are sensitive to the thickness of their application: the color changes where the glaze is thicker or thinner.

As you can see, there are many variables to consider in working at cone 6. With some experimentation, practice, and knowledge of the color wheel, you can make those variables work for your style and creative vision.

 

Complementary Colors
are any two colors on opposite sides of the wheel. Use this grid of color choices and the color wheel to determine which colors are complements. (Click on thumbnail tiles for larger images of the glaze colors.)

More Complements
In addition to the first-level "opposite" complements, you can work with color complements from various positions around the wheel.

Split Complements: Pick 2 colors close together (analogous colors) and 1 opposite on the wheel.

Triad Complements: Pick 3 colors spaced at equal distances around the wheel.

Analogous Colors: Pick colors from a continuous arc around the wheel.

You can also work with Square Complements, by picking 4 colors spaced equally around the wheel, or Rectangle Complements, by picking 2 pairs of analogous colors that are opposites on the wheel.

 

Color Contrasts
It can also be important to consider how colors interact with each other, beyond their placement on the color wheel. Brighter, lighter colors can give the illusion of either advancing or receding, depending on the background colors paired with them. You can use this effect, if you wish, to really make your design work 'pop' in the viewer's eye. Compare the apparent 'behavior' of the center squares in these two examples:

How do these background colors affect the red center square?

And have you noticed if the color samples on this page look different from the same color samples on other pages of this site, where we placed them on white backgrounds?

 

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