Description

Colour Wheels are tools that teach colour relationships by organising colours in a circle, so they can be visualized how they relate to each other. The abstract illustrative organization of colour hues around a circle is an effective aid to understand the relationships between primary colours, secondary colours or tertiary colours.

The 12-colour wheel is a common structuring of hues that is based in paint and light and is hence popular with artists as well as photographers.

The renown mathematician Sir Isaac Newton invented the first colour wheel. While studying white light reflecting off prisms, he noticed that the light reflected a spectrum of colours.

Background on Colour Theory:

In the visual arts,  colour theory is a body of practical guidance to colour mixing and the visual effects of a specific colour combination. There are also definitions (or categories) of colours based on the colour wheel: Primary colour, Secondary colour and Tertiary colour.  Although colour theory principles first appeared in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti  (c. 1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1490), a tradition of “colour theory” began in the 18th century, initially within a partisan controversy over Isaac Newton’s theory of colour (Opticks, 1704) and the nature of Primary colours. From there it developed as an independent artistic tradition with only superficial reference to colourimetry and vision science (Wikipedia).