Itten’s Color Wheel: Here’s How to Build This Tool to Understand Primary, Secondary, and Complementary Colors.
How to Draw the Itten Color Circle: Introduction
ohannes Itten was a Swiss designer, painter and sculptor of the early twentieth century . He studied colouring extensively, to the point of devising a chromatic circle to represent the essential or pure colours and their descendants from mixtures.
Remembered as a colour theorist, Johannes Itten analysed hues in terms of their aesthetic-communicative aspect, through which he grouped and graphically represented primary colours and each derivative.
Required materials
- Paper
- Compass
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Colored pencils
Relationships between colorations
Itten’s color wheel shows the relationships between colors by visually ordering the primary colors (yellow, red, and blue) and the secondary colors (orange, green, and violet).
The disk in question is divided into segments. The combination of colors located in the same segment generates a harmonious and balanced effect.
The combination of colours that are on opposite sides of the Itten colour wheel (called complementary ) creates a lively and vivacious effect.
Graphic representation of the Itten chromatic circle
To graphically represent the Itten chromatic circle we need to equip ourselves with a compass and trace a circle of the desired size.
Keeping the compass in the same opening, we fix the metal tip on the circumference and draw a sign on this geometric figure .
We continue the work by pointing the compass on the sign just drawn and we obtain another one in succession . We continue in this manner, until the points are six .
Ring division
Starting from the top vertex of the hexagon, we draw a segment that joins it to the third vertex going towards the right of the sheet.
From here, we start another line that reaches the fifth vertex and returns again to the upper one . We pay the utmost attention in carrying out these actions, because a mistake would compromise the final result.
If we have followed the instructions, we will have an equilateral triangle enclosed within the regular hexagon.
Let’s draw the internal bisectors , so that they meet at the center of the geometric figure.
We point the compass again to the center and draw another circle, at least 2 cm larger than the previous one.
We divide the inside of the ring we just formed into twelve regular wedges .
Circle coloring
Now we have to color the Itten color circle. Inside the equilateral triangle there must be the three primary colors ( yellow, red and blue ), from whose union we have the secondary colors ( orange, purple and green ). The latter will fill in succession the spaces of the hexagon that remain empty.
In the ring , instead, the twelve primary, secondary and tertiary colors must be indicated . To find the complementary of a color, we take into consideration the diametrically opposite one.
