Art

Color Theory: Mixing Paint Colors : Color Theory: Mixing Primary Colors



Use a color wheel to find out about primary colors. Learn how to mix primary colors from an art instructor in this free color theory video.

Expert: Gretchen Kibbe
Bio: Gretchen Kibbe is an artist and part-time faculty member at Appalachian State University. She worked as a scenic artist on the Spike Lee movie School Daze.
Filmmaker: Christian Munoz-Donoso

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19 thoughts on “Color Theory: Mixing Paint Colors : Color Theory: Mixing Primary Colors
  1. I agree media4macs. Actually if you map out the primary colors (science in your definition) and the secondary to those, (secondary to yellow, magenta and cyan are green, blue, and red) you can observe that the "traditional" primary colors (yellow, blue, and red) 2 are off by one click. Yes you can make a lot of colors with them, but not all. Magenta + Cyan = blue, but how do you make Cyan from Blue, Red, and Yellow? I usually go about explaining it that way. Those are even light like yellow!

  2. Technically, red and blue are not primary. They are holdovers from Newton (400 years ago) and the true primaries in terms of pigment would be magenta (hot red/berry color) and cyan (greenish blue like the sky).

    So, yes, you can mix two colors and get red. Mix magenta with a hint of yellow and you will get a very nice red. I'm creating a DVD about color theory and just snooping around the web to see if I'm leaving out anything. rock on.

  3. @Media4Macs That's why when discussing color theory as it relates to painting or subtractive color, one needs to inform people that red and blue are NOT primary but are close approximations. You can certainly get a red by mixing magenta and yellow. So, your gamut of colors is wider using the CYMK model vs the RYB model. Just good to know.

  4. @TimJSwan89 Yep. when you think about it, red and blue are just dirty results of mixing the primaries cyan, magenta and yellow. If you don't have magenta and cyan (or similar) in your palette, it doesn't mean you can't make great paintings but you basically lose some brilliance in a few areas. What if you NEEDED a hot pink berry color? How you gonna get that with red? Canno doit capn.

  5. yeah… this isn't really a "colour theory" video when she says nothing can make up yellow. Additively yellow is made by green and red. This should be called a painters primary video.

  6. "You can't mix them from anything else?" A "primary" color used in a color system that is then used to compose all other colors in that color system. So, yes, obviously, in the RYB color system which you are using, where Red, Yellow, and Blue are the only paints being used, your never going to magically back to Red, Yellow, or Blue once you start mixing them together. How many cans of Red, Yellow, and Blue paint did you have to burn through to figure that one out? Your just begging the question, you start from the assumption that RYB are the primaries, use no other colors in your mixing process, and, from this experience of being unable to mix RYB to get RYB back, decide that that's good enough to start claiming that they're some universal primaries. My advice to you: go to the store, grab some cyan and magenta, mix it together, and try to tell me to me that it doesn't look blue.

    Newsflash, there's no such thing as universal primaries. Not even CMYK. You can get pretty far tricking the three cones of the eye into seeing a wide range of colors from just mixtures of three well chosen ones, but due to the nature of the cones in the eyes, their sensitivity to wide, variable, and overlapping swaths of frequencies, there are always going to some colors that exist only in nature or as unique hues. This is true even of complicated systems that have upwards of 13 primaries, it is especially when it comes to common, generic color systems like sRGB and CMYK, in particular, they leave out vast swaths of possible greens. But CMYK is at least sensible in comparison to your garbage. Magenta, after all, filters out the green from white light, Yellow filters the blue, and Cyan filters the Red. So, with careful mixtures of these, you can essentially control the amount of Red, Green, and Blue reflected back.

    In contrast, Red and Blue don't make good choices for subtractive primaries. To get a pigment to reflect light that looks red, it has to filter out all the blue and green. And the same holds true for blue, it has to filter out all the red and green. That inherently leaves them as more nonselective than the Magenta and Cyan you jettisoned for them. Red is partially redudant with yellow, neither can filter out only a single color out of light. Green pretty much gets hammered here, there's no way to produce it unless you fudge a bit and use a cyanish shade of blue to mix muddy green with yellow. Maybe red and blue would be useful as independent pigments, as red and blue produced by CMYK mixing will inevitably be somewhat duller than red and blue alone. But that's why you're a painter after all, you aren't bound by economies of scale to selecting just three or four colors, you've got every shade in the world at your disposal. Why bind yourselves by a primary system, especially a crappy one like RYB?

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