Copic colour wheels

It’s nice to go back to basics sometimes and that’s just where we’ve started in the Copic Jumpstart class run by Sandy Allnock: colour wheels. Not just the usual “here’s a colour wheel, this is how you use it”, but “here’s a colour wheel, now go make your own”.

It’s a process that makes you really look at the colours. Training your eye so that you can pick an orange that not only sits nicely between the red and yellow you’ve chosen, but that also has the right depth and tone so that the resulting colour wheel is cohesive.

I hadn’t planned to blog this class, but a couple of people asked for my colour wheel numbers, so I thought a quick post was in order.

My first thought was to try and match the only actual colour wheel that I have, but I quickly realised that it was based on cyan-magenta-yellow and not the primary colours. And then I thought, why not do it anyway. This bit of the class is about experimenting and learning about how colours work, so why not do a CMY wheel.

CMY wheel:
RV09, RV29, R08, Y38, Y06, YG25, G09, BG49, B04, B26, V09, RV66

As well as making a primary colours wheel using Sandy’s colour choices, which I shan’t share here, I had to make one using my own as well. I started by selecting my red, yellow and blue, and then looked for colours that fit at the midpoints between them, and again for the next level midpoints.

Primary wheel:
R27, YR09, YR16, Y38, Y06, YG25, G09, BG15, B06, BV04, V17, RV17

For the last of the four blank wheels, I decided to create a pastel version. I tend to shy away from using pastel colours, generally preferring stronger mixes with a decent level of contrast, so it was good to step out of my comfort zone and take a closer look at the lighter markers.

Pastel wheel:
R20, YR82, YR21, Y32, Y00, YG11, G12, BG11, B00, BV00, V01, RV00