Secondary Colours

Tips for the Easy Peasy Artist

Colour Knowledge by Easy Peasy Art School

Artists need to know their colours. If you would like to be an artist you need to know all about how colours are made by mixing colours together.

Colours are often displayed on a COLOUR WHEEL to show how they are related.

Secondary colours are the next set of colours after our PRIMARY colours. SECONDARY colours are created when we mix equal parts of 2 Primary Colours.

The 3 Secondary Colours:

In Art, the three SECONDARY COLOURS are :

ORANGE 

GREEN

& 

VIOLET

How are they made?

• Orange: Orange = Red & Yellow
• Green: Green = Yellow & Blue
• Violet: Violet = Blue & Red

But what about PURPLE?

Sometimes people call the Secondary colour made by mixing RED & BLUE as PURPLE. The colour Purple is actually what is called a tertiary colour (A colour created by mixing a primary with a secondary colour.) Another name for purple is BLUE-VIOLET.

More Information:

To further your colour knowledge, don’t forget to read our other blogs on primary, tertiary and complementary colours. If you would like a print out of our colour wheel posters, have a look on our website under LESSONS > OTHER > COLOUR WHEELS. Here you will find printable colour wheels available in both English and U.S spelling.