Finally its here! "Colour the theory and the practise in flower arranging." A world exclusive to floralartmall.com, this fabulous CD has 12 essential lessons on colour theory with floral lessons to try, plus Itten's theory explained the easy way! This CDis the basic requirement for any floral designer wantng to explore colour. More details here The featured element here is Colour

"A visual sensation dependent on light, with emotional and cultural association." From Flair, The FASNZ book 
The 12 part colour wheel above is based on the three primary colours ( Red, Yellow and Blue ) placed evenly around a circle. 

Between the three primaries are the secondary colours (Green, Orange and Violet) which are mixtures of
the two primaries they sit between.

The tertiary colours fall between each primary and secondary. Between yellow and orange, for example,  is yellow orange, between blue and violet is blue violet and so on.

All these colours around the outside of the colour wheel are called saturated colours. They contain no
 black, no white and none of their complimentary or opposite colour.

Johannes Itten devised a 12 part colour wheel, as it offers a much better understanding of the interaction of colours
 

  Compound colours are colours containing a mixture of the three primaries. All the browns, khakis and
  earth colours are compound colours.

Colour in Floral Art is the most striking of all the elements, and its impact is enormous.

Complimentary colours are those opposite each other in the colur wheel, such as  red/green. blue/orange and yellow/violet. Put these colours together and your eyes with almost sting as these colours are equal in colour value.Use these combinations to show off a special piece of plant material.

A colour tryad is a colour taken from 3 sides of the wheel, If this is blue/yellow/red you will create a circus, child's room effect, fun, bright and cheerful.

Pick only colours from one part of the colour wheel such as the blues/purples/greens you'll get dark effects, watery, night, mystical,relaxing Choose red/orange/yellow and show heat, light, zing, wow factor and stimulation.

Choose two colours side by side from the wheel and one from opposite and you'll get contrast and harmony working well together and the opposite colour balances the other two.

Pick the materials for your next designs based on colour!

Try a tryad from the colour wheel, red, yellow and blue and make a design for a happy occasion. The two photos on the right are this combination and designed by students from the Floral Design course at Tauranga Polytechnic in New Zealand for the Ellerslie Flower Show. The horses were covered in camellia leaves and  the colour theme was a good choice for the fairground theme they chose. The horses turned and the design was the talking point of the show.