After Newton had used a prism to separate daylight and count seven individual colors (hue), it appeared to him that this was a closed system. By taking the violet end of the spectrum and linking it to the red start-point, he thus created a convincing circle of colors.
A color wheel or color circle is an abstract illustrative organization of color hues around a circle that shows relationships between colors from:
Most color wheels are based on:
For a total of 12 main divisions; some add more intermediates, for 24 named colors.
In a additive model (Plus colors)
The 12 main colors are:
In a paint or subtractive color wheel (Minus Color)
Example of a red, yellow, blue
for a CMYK color wheel:
The color wheel shows a hierarchy of colors where:
Other color wheels, however, are based on the four opponent colors, and may have four or eight main colors.