Colour Wheels

June 28, 2026

This is the colour wheel that started it all. It has to be more than twenty years old. I think that I took a book out of the library all about starting a watercolour practice. One of the exercises was to create a colour wheel. I think I took the exercise a bit far or in a different direction than was strictly necessary. No matter how hard I try, the graphic designer in me still finds its way out.

Over the years, I would occasionally pull out all of my artwork to see what I wanted to keep. There are always some cringey things in that pile that need to get thrown out before anyone sees them. Not the case with this little colour wheel. Every time I would pull it out, it brought me joy. It’s just so fun to look at.

I always wanted to do more with this. When I had the printing press, I thought the black portion would be a really fun thing to print and then people could fill in whatever colours they wanted with whatever medium they wanted. I started to draw it up on the computer but for some reason I never finished it. Maybe I ran into some sort of block and was distracted by something new and shiny. That’s likely what happened.

A few months ago, I found it again. I guess I had worked on the idea again sometime in between because I had drawn up ten colour wheels instead of just one and had some paper samples waiting to be tested. I wanted to see how they would take the paint before getting a bunch printed off. Again, I must have been distracted by something shiny and new and forgot all about it. This time I was determined to finish them.

The simplest thing to do would have been to print them off one to a sheet of paper. No cutting and no fussing. It would have been fine. But I didn’t want them that big. The size I liked meant that I could fit six to a sheet. Six little squares would have been easy enough to cut out. But no. Why do things the easy way when you can make things so much harder than they need to be? Looking at the shape of the colour wheels, I thought this teardrop shape looked interesting. Special, even. Then once I cut the first one, I found that sharp little corner at the top of the teardrop annoying. Lucky for me, I have a corner cutter from my printing days so I cut off all of those annoying little corners. So much better.

I made all of these colour wheels without a real plan. This has been a frivolous project from the start. I just thought it was neat and my brain enjoyed puzzling it out. That could be another reason that it’s been such a long time coming. But as soon as I printed them up, I found a great use for them. If you read the newsletter this month, you’ll know that I started a sketchbook practice in earnest. A lot of the sketches have been painting sketches. There’s always paint left on the palette so when I finish a sketch, I use the leftover paint to make a colour wheel. Then I stick it to the wall with all of the other colour wheels.

Were the years of working on this along with all of the extra cutting and trimming to make these really worth it? All I can say is that when I look at this wall I am FILLED with joy.