Before we Hit the Triad
In art, we can define the Primary Triad as a “color scheme”. There are many color schemes that an artist can use to create the impression they hope for. A color scheme is the artist’s starting selection of colors, usually based within 2-4 different hues. Many established schemes exist and are seen every day, in advertising, movies, and print. A scheme is essentially a formula to derive a set of colors from the traditional color wheel. It helps artists maintain a consistent focus of color with their designs.
Some popular color schemes are:
- Monochromatic
- Analogous
- Complementary
- Split-Complementary
- Triad
- Tetrad
Today, we will focus entirely on a particular type of Triad scheme: the Primary Triad. And, while the Primary Triad can be found all throughout our media world in its most pure and unblended form, we’re going to discuss how it lends itself beautifully to a painter’s palette.
Primary Triad Basics
What is a Primary Triad?
The “Triad” finds its meaning in the number 3. All Triad schemes consist of 3 colors.
The “Primary” finds its meaning in the particular selection of colors – Primary colors. Namely, red, yellow, and blue.
Putting both words together, we can understand what we are dealing with. A Primary Triad is a color scheme based solely in the colors red, yellow, and blue.
The next time you’re looking through an advertisement for children’s toys, pay special attention to the color choices. You will often find that the Primary Triad is used commonly to appeal to kids. Not only is it a very basic and consistent set of colors that can be easily identified, but the colors also operate together to create a huge amount of visual interest.
Yellow and Red are often used to grab attention, with their strong and vibrant hues. Blue is a nice counterbalance to them and offers its own intense and pleasing color. Putting these colors together, you find a large amount of visual vibration, as they play off of each other in a balanced and visually stimulating way. In fact, the Bauhaus School often revered red, yellow, and blue as being central to art and our understanding of color.
But it’s not just these three colors alone that make them so suitable to painters…
Feature #1: They Mix Well Together
When you start with a Primary Triad, it makes it much easier to mix a wide variety of colors. You probably remember being in elementary school and learning that red and yellow make orange, red and blue make violet, and yellow and blue make green. This basic formula has helped artists for centuries.
Orange, violet, and green are known as “secondary colors” and what’s magical about them is that they feel completely different from the primaries. You can see the way that they link together, but they also set themselves apart as unique hues.
Let’s look at a twelve-color wheel for a second.
You’ll notice that the primary colors and secondary colors also have colors between them with names that combine their neighbors, primary-first. So, the color between red and orange is known as red-orange. These are called tertiary colors. And if we were to create a 24-color wheel, we would see even more bridging hues. We can even break it down further if we want to.
What is remarkable about this is how fantastic our primary colors are at creating other vibrant colors and how many colors we can create when we mix them together in different ratios. This is worth exploring and I would recommend that you experiment with your primaries to see how many colors you can create!
Feature #2: But, wait! There are even more colors!
Ever wonder how you mix a brown? I remember as a kid, I asked my mom how to make brown with the crayons I had. She said to mix red and green. She was right!
However, that’s not the only way you can make brown. There are dozens of ways to do it. There are even many ways to shift the brown exactly to where you want it to go, whether it’s more of a red-brown or a green-brown. It all has to do with complementary colors.
First, let’s define what we’re talking about. We already talked about those vibrant primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries. When they are at their fullest, they are often referred to as “pure” hues. Now, we’re looking at neutral hues. These are the muddy colors, like brown or gray.
A neutral hue is created what you combine complementary colors. Complementary colors are on opposite sides of the color wheel from each other. For instance, orange and blue. Yellow and violet, too. Pick any color and trace a line directly to the opposite side of the wheel – there you will find the complement.
Now, I want you to notice something awesome. I mentioned combining orange and blue a moment ago. Well, blue is a primary color and orange is a secondary, made up of red and yellow. So, in essence, we are combining our primaries to create those neutral colors. This is incredibly insightful for artists who may have mixed a neutral color and it just isn’t coming out right.
Let’s say you mix you are painting a yellow flower. As you move into some of the shadowed areas of the petals, you see that you need to mix a neutral color. You rightly think to use violet in combination with yellow. However, as you mix them together, the neutral is coming out too green. Why is that happening?
It’s because your violet is actually bluer than it should be. Remember, when yellow and blue are mixed, you get green. If you want to tone down that green, you will have to add some red. Which makes sense, because red is the complement of green and will reduce the greenness of your mixture!
With the Primary Triad, you can create so many colors! Also, remember that you can add white to lighten any of these colors and black to darken any of them. That gives you a whole cornucopia of colors to work with.
Feature #3: Color Harmony
Do you ever go to your box of paints, not knowing which ones to choose? Maybe you’ve grabbed upwards of ten different tubes in the interest of getting a good variety of colors on your canvas. However, once it comes time to paint, you look at your palette and find yourself overwhelmed by the options. Eventually you just start choosing colors and hoping they will work. An artist who chooses colors randomly will always struggle to achieve color harmony.
Instead, let’s simplify. Using a Primary Triad will teach us how to economize and understand color relativity much better. It is vitally important to understand that colors act in relation to each other. They are often understood by the artist and viewer within their own framework. As an example, look at the painters of the renaissance. They had a very limited selection of colors to work with, mostly earthy in hue. Yet, they created masterworks of art, many of which read far more colorfully than we might expect.
This means that we, as painters, can also simplify our colors. In doing this, we will prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed with choices and we will also increase our understanding of color, as we utilize a limited palette of pigments. We will see firsthand how colors will work together to communicate exactly what you hope they will, even if you weren’t expecting them to.
A Primary Triad is a wonderful starting point for painters interested in imbuing their work with harmony. When you have fewer colors to choose from, you have far less chance that your colors will clash. Yes, a blue in real life may not be exactly the blue paint you have in front of you, but maybe you can mix one with what you have. Not only that, but it may not actually matter as much as color harmony does.
I think the most remarkable thing about using the Primary Triad as your starting palette is that it achieves that color harmony while still granting you so many color options. It’s like playing in a sandbox where every toy makes sense and works together to make the whole experience fun.
Next Steps
Now that you understand the simplicity and flexibility of the Primary Triad, I hope that you will use it yourself. A recommended set of colors that will get vibrant results are Pyrrole Red, Lemon Yellow, and Ultramarine Blue. However, you can experiment with different pigments in place of your primaries.
Try:
- Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Payne’s Gray (very earthy and natural colors)
- Quinacridone Red, Indian Yellow, Phthalo Blue (probably going to get some interesting greens here)
- Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow, Cobalt Blue (pretty vibrant, with a good chance for nice violets)
These are just off the top of my head. Experiment with your own combinations. Also, remember that replacing one of the primaries with a neutral will still have a nice harmonious effect and may even spark some creativity.
Have fun trying it out!
Check out this great color wheel resource, here!
I also wrote up a little article about Three Strong Strategies for Mixing Colors.