Scales of Grey to a whole Color Wheel

Our Color and Composition Instructor is working very hard to "train our eye" to

• Value* - "how light or dark a color is"; "the quantity of light a color reflects"
• Hue* - "name of the color itself"; "determined by the specific wavelength of a color in a ray of light"
• Intensity (Chroma)* - "how bright or dull a color is"; "the quality of light a color reflects"

She started by asking us to create a Grey Scale. 

We used the core Black and White paints and then combined them to find the middle grey between. And then we find the grey between the Middle Grey and Black...and then the grey between that "new" grey and black. And so on. 

Black, White and 7 shades of grey make up the Grey Scale. 

We did some of the painting/mixing in class - and some at home. 

Knowing that los gatos would be more than willing to help me play with paint, I setup my paints outside on the table on the back porch. 

I tried to work my way through the greys I needed to create but I do seem to have a knack for creating a particular shade of grey: 

Hey, wait..that shade of grey looks familiar...

{sigh/grin}

I ran out of daylight and it was getting cold so I moved inside.

But there was still the quandary of the helper-cats. Hmmmm. 

So - I took over the stove-top in the kitchen (as it tends to be cat-less.) 

I finished cutting down the swatches of paint I'd created, put them in the necessary order, and got out the glue. 

I turned in the grey scale and got a pretty good grade on it! {Even though one of my greys was a little too dark}

The next assignment was a bit brighter. After all the grey shades, color was a bit shocking. 

{Yes, I started out on the back porch and ended up working on the stove-top again.} ;-)

We needed to create all the shades to build this color wheel. 

The extra challenge to this exercise being: the primary Blue we were using is green-based as well as super dense (I believe the red has yellow in it as well). This means yellow has an unexpected influence on your shade-creation. Moreover, it takes the amount of {dense} blue paint you could put on the head of a pin mixed with a tablespoon of Red to make "violet". 

And the Secondary* (colors from 2 primary hues) and the Tertiary* (from all 3 primary hues) colors are not quite what you'd expect. For instance "violet" isn't the royal purple we're used to. It's kind of a brown-scarlet {below to the right of the blue in the triangle section - that's the correct, teacher-approved "violet". I kid you not}.

I was a little heavy-handed with the blue but I still earned a pretty decent grade on my color wheel. {Yep, most of the tertiary-color comments from the teacher you see in the picture above suggest "a little too blue"}.

There was one more exercise related to training our eyes to hues....but I didn't take pictures before handing it in. Later I'll include pictures of the White to Blue scale I did and we'll see what kind of grade it earns. Although - it's quite probable I was still a little heavy-handed with the blue in...my Blue scale. {wry grin}

* All color-related definitions from this post are credited to my Color & Comp. Instructor (and stored in my brain for a color-terminology quiz.)  ;-)