10 RYB colour relationships and how to use them

To create with colour, it helps to understand 10 colour relationships found on a red yellow blue (RYB) colour wheel. This post will show those colour relationships, and identify the many sub-relationships found in them.

You may have organised your student grade pencils, or artist grade coloured pencils.  Or, you may have a smaller set of pencils, or single pencils, and you have layered them to create some new colours.

Essentially, you have identified groups of colour wheel colours. 

But which ones look good together, and which ones don’t?  You want to plan your artwork and you want to know quickly.  How can you do that?

Needing help with colour choices

On my art and craft journey my biggest problem I had was colour.  I was doing well until I had to apply colour – black and white drawings were ok – but once I had to think about colour – it all fell apart.

Since then, it has taken me a long time to understand colour found on both a red yellow blue (RYB) colour wheel, and a cyan magenta yellow key (CMYK) colour wheel. Yes – it took years. 

While it’s taken me a long time – I don’t want you to have to spend months or years trying to figure out what colour to use and how to apply it.  You want to spend your time doing art and craft.  I know that I do.

Yet – this problem is just something that I experienced.  It is something that I see regularly at craft shows, fetes and in online stores – items that are made with great technical skills but looks unappealing because the colours chosen weren’t quite right.

My heart goes out to those creators.  I hope I can help.

Let’s find colour quicker

After reading this post, you will know which RYB colour wheel colour families appear harmonious together.

These 10 colour relationships will relate to everything in your art and craft stash that has colour.  This can be anything – sewing, painting, drawing, or even house painting.

Essentially, if a colour goes with another, it doesn’t matter what medium it is – the same applies.

There may be some gifted people out there who just know by looking at a colour, that they know it will go with another colour.  They seem to know in their ‘gut’ that the colours go together.

If you’re like me then you might need some help.

This post will break down 10 red yellow blue colour wheel colour harmonies, and their sub-relationships. I use them in my artwork. I hope it will help you too, and you can find colour choices for your creations quickly.

Learning the hard way

When starting out, I didn’t know colour theory. Yet since then, I have learnt much about a RYB colour wheel, and how it differs to a CMYK colour wheel, and when to use one or the other.

In the process of learning, I created colour wheels using my coloured pencils and drawing mediums. As well, I created templates so I could see what each colour relationship looked like using my own mediums.

Some colour technicals

Clock based

The colour wheel I use for myself, was developed on a complementary colour wheel in the ‘Colored Pencil Solution Book – tips and techniques for winning results’ book by Janie Gildow and Barbara Benedetti Newton. Doing exercises in this book helped me to learn to draw with coloured pencils.

This colour wheel differs in that it follows a clock format, and lists colour families in time order. As such, with the 12.00 o’clock position being red, the 6.00 o’clock position in green, etc.  The table below shows the colour wheel in the clock positions.

Colour temperature

Before we can move on to looking at the 10 RYB colour relationships, we need to see colour temperature.  We will follow a colour wheel that uses clock positions in this chart.  Clockwise on the chart we will view the colours as warm or cool.  A warm colour is one that appears to move towards you as a viewer, and a cool colour moves to the background as it is viewed.  An example here is the yellow and violet complementary colour relationship.

These colour temperatures are important for you as you create your artwork.  Do you want a warm scene? Use more warm colours to dominate your drawing.  Do you want a cool, dark scene?  Use more cool colours to dominate your drawing.

Temperature complexity

So, which colours on the colour wheel are warm and which are cool.  Well – that depends. At the start of my understanding colour, I would have sworn it was the inclusion of a warm colour – ie red, or yellow. However, in hindsight, I find that colour temperature is about colour relativity – a concept highlighted by Josef Albers. By this, it relates to how a colour appears against another colour. For temperature, this would affect if a colour appears warmer, or cooler when placed against another.

Nevertheless, to help us understand the performance of colour, this exercise identifies half a colour wheel as warm, and half as cool. This is to help us understand colour opposites. For our purpose, the warm colours will commence with red at the 12.00 o’clock position and finish at the 5.00 o’clock positions.  The warm colours will be red, red-orange, orange, orange-yellow, yellow, and yellow-green.

Consequently, the cool colours are from the 6.00 o’clock to 11.00 o’clock positions on the colour wheel.  These are green, green-blue, blue, blue-violet, violet, and violet-red.

Tints, tones, and shades

The next item to note is that colour are not just a hue (i.e. the colour and its saturation), but rather that other colour can be added to create other versions of the same colour.  These are tints, tones, and shades.  Tints are created by adding white, tones are created by adding grey and shades are created by adding black.  So, when we speak about colour on a colour wheel, these colour families all include hue, tints, tones, and shades of the colour.

10 RYB colour relationships

There are 10 colour relationships found on a RYB colour wheel. These are:

1. Monochromatic;
2. Complementary;
3. Split Complementary;
4. A. Double Split Complementary, and B. Tetrad Rectangle;
5. Tetrad Square;
6. Triad;
7. Analoguous 2;
8. Analoguous 3;
9. Analoguous 4; and
10. Analoguous 5.

Let’s talk about each of these colour relationships individually. 

Monochromatic

Monochromatic is the tints, tones and shades that belong to one colour wheel colour family.  Here is an example of the Caran d’Ache Luminance coloured pencils violet colour family.

Violet is made up of blue and red.  This colour then changes when white, black, and grey are added – making the colour tints, tones, and shades.

In effect, all these tints, tones and shades of violet should go together, along with the intensity, hue, and values of the colour violet.

See here an example of a monochromatic colour relationship.

Complementary

The second colour relationship we will look at is the complementary colour relationship.  These colours sit opposite each other on a colour wheel.  This is important as one colour is always cool, and the other is warm.

See here an example of a complementary colour relationship.

When seen together, two complementary colours are far from harmonious.  They are jarring and loud.  When mixed, they create dirty colours, or rather, tone down each other.  One of the best ways to show complementary colours is to have a dominant colour of one of the complements, and a minor colour of its complement. These minor colours pop or attract attention against the complement.

The six complementary colour relationships on a RYB colour wheel are:

1. Red and green;
2. Red-orange and green-blue,
3. Orange and blue;
4. Orange-Yellow and blue-violet;
5. Yellow and violet; and
6. Yellow-green and violet-red.

See this example of orange and blue.  See how the orange stands out against the blue.

When would you use complementary colours?  Any time you want to make something pop (place side by side), or by mixing to tone down each colour.  Complementary colours are great to use to show shade in a drawing or picture.

Split complement

The split complement of colours is ‘Y’ shaped on a colour wheel.

This colour relationship take the complement colours and rather than looking at the colour opposite another on the colour wheel, it looks at the colours on both sides of one of the complementary colour. This is illustrated on a colour wheel as shown below.

The twelve split complementary colour relationships found on a RYB colour wheel are:

1. Red, yellow-green, green-blue;
2. Red-orange, green, blue;
3. Orange, green-blue, blue-violet;
4. Orange-yellow, blue, violet;
5. Yellow, blue-violet, violet-red;
6. Yellow-green, violet, red;
7. Green, violet-red, red-orange;
8. Green-blue, red, orange;
9. Blue, red-orange, orange-yellow;
10. Blue-violet, orange, yellow;
11. Violet, orange-yellow, yellow-green; and
12. Violet-red, yellow, green.

When would you use a split complementary colour relationship? Given that this colour sub-relationship uses three colour families. As such, there will be instances where two colours will be of one similar temperature, and the other will be their opposite. Depending on how the colour is applied, this could make for a dominant cool, or dominant warm image. See the example below.

In this colour relationship, there is a main or dominant colour, with two less dominant colours.  See this example of violet, red and yellow-green. In this example, yellow-green is the dominant colour, and violet and red are the less dominant split complementary colours.

Double split complement

The third colour relationship we will look at is the double-split complement.  This colour relationship is like the split complement colour relationship, but rather than looking at two colours on either side of one colour of a complementary colour relationship, this relationship looks at the two colours on both sides of both the complementary colours.

As such, this relationship is presented as a slim ‘x’ on the colour wheel. See the illustration of this colour relationship below.

The six colour groups in the double split complementary colour relationship on a RYB colour wheel are:

1. Red, orange, green, blue;
2. Red-orange, orange-yellow, green-blue, blue-violet;
3. Orange, yellow, blue, violet;
4. Orange-yellow, yellow-green, blue-violet, violet-red;
5. Yellow, green, violet, red; and
6. Yellow-green, green-blue, violet-red, red-orange.

The next colour relationship we will talk about is the Tetrad rectangle.

Tetrad Rectangle

Really, the tetrad rectangle colour relationship is another name for the double split complementary colour relationship.

It is the relationship of four colours separated by 2 on the colour wheel.  However, these four colours are two sets of complementary colours.

Their relationship is illustrated as the same as the Double split complement colour relationship.  Another way of looking at the Tetrad rectangle and the double split complement are that they are 4 colours 2 apart on the colour wheel, and these four colours are two sets of complements.

When would you use a double split complement or a Tetrad rectangle colour relationship?

This colour relationship balances four colours (2 sets of complements).  Depending on the colours used, say primary colour versus tertiary colours, these complements placed against each other would pop.  Take care though, as with complementary colours, one is warm and the other is cool.

You could treat it like the complement colour is dominant, with a smaller amount of its complement.  In this colour relationship, primary and secondary colour relationships are presented, or only tertiary colour relationships. 

Personally, I find the tertiary colours in this RYB colour wheel relationship the most visually pleasing.  See the orange-yellow, yellow-green, blue-violet and violet-red colours in the image below.

In this example, the orange-yellow is dominant (its complement blue-violet is less so), and yellow-green is dominant (and its complement violet-red is less so).

Now, we will move onto the Tetrad Square colour relationship.

Tetrad Square

The Tetrad Square is the colour relationship where four colours four apart on the colour wheel are used together.  Once again, this relationship involves complementary colours.

This colour relationship is represented as a broad ‘x’ on a colour wheel.  See the illustration of how this is shown below.

The three colour combinations in this RYB colour relationship are:

1. Red, orange-yellow, green, blue-violet;
2. Red-orange, yellow, green-blue, violet; and
3. Orange, yellow-green, blue, violet-red.

As you can see, each of the colour combinations are two sets of complementary colours.  E.g. red and green and orange-yellow and blue-violet.

How would you use this colour combination?  Once again, like the Tetrad rectangle and the Double split complement, you are managing four colours.  You would need to have a dominant colour supported by less dominant colours.  See this illustration in the image showing red, green, orange-yellow and blue-violet colour combination.  Where red is dominant and green less so, and orange-yellow is dominant and blue-violet less so.

The next colour relationship to discover is the Triadic colour relationship.

Triad

The Triad colours relationship is presented as a ‘Y’ on a RYB colour wheel.  See this illustrated in the image below.

This colour relationship doesn’t include any complementary colour combinations.  It presents on the colour wheel as a relationship having a combination of one cool colour and two warm colours, or one warm colour and two cool colours.

The four colour combinations in the triad colour relationship found on a RYB colour wheel are:

1. Red, yellow, blue;
2. Red-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet;
3. Orange, green, violet;
4. Orange-yellow, green-blue, violet-red.

So, remember back to the beginning of this post, and we spoke about warm and cool colours?  Well, your use of this colour relationship would depend if you wanted a warm or cool effect.

Use the red, yellow, blue, or the red-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet colour combinations for a warm effect, and the orange, green, violet or orange-yellow, green-blue, violet-red for a cool effect.  You can see how this appears with the example below using the triadic colour combination of orange-yellow, green-blue and violet-red that creates a cool effect.

The next major colour relationship owe will look at is the analoguous colour relationship.

Analoguous

An analoguous red yellow blue colour wheel relationship is one where colours sit beside each other on the colour wheel.  They can have two colours that sit beside each other, 3, 4 or 5 colours. 

See the analoguous colour relationships illustrated below.

Analoguous 2

Analoguous 3

Analoguous 4

Analoguous 5

Yet you need to take care when using this colour relationship for two reasons. 

1. The warmth cool colour divide; and
2. The number of colours used to balance the image.

Once again, be mindful of the warm-cool colour combinations, and if you get up to 5 analoguous colours, you will have a dominant warm or cool colour scheme. You will also need to manage.

While it might be a simpler relationship, the 2 and 3 analoguous colour relationships could be difficult to manage.  Remember the old saying ‘Blue and green should never be seen without a colour in between’?  Even with the third colour in a 3 analoguous combination, this may be the tertiary colour, say for ‘green and blue’, the third colour in the 3 analoguous relationship would be green-blue.  This may not be dominant enough to make a pleasing colour combination.  See the image below that shows the 2 analoguous, followed by adding 3, 4 and 5 analoguous colours to the image.

Analoguous 2

Analoguous 3

Analoguous 4

Analoguous 5

Now you know 10 RYB colour relationships

So, there they are.  The 10 colour relationships found on a red yellow blue (RYB) colour wheel that you can use in your art and craft projects (or anything that requires colour).  You also know that colour temperature affects colour harmony. By following this post, you can understand RYB colour relationships and apply these to your art and craftwork.

You can follow instructions in our post to help make your own colour wheels and find colour relationships.

Or perhaps you’d like to get access to a reference tool that will help you see these colour sub-relationships, temperatures, and colour combinations in one document, as well as those found in a cyan magenta yellow key colour wheel. You can find more information about the 499 page print book that provides these visual references here.