Color Theory, Subtractive & Additive

33 thoughts on “Color Theory, Subtractive & Additive”

1. hello mural..thank u so much for ur explaining & I have one question.. now if I want to get any certain color I want by mixing the primary colors, how can i know what colors to mix? sorry if u have already mentioned that in ur videos but I'm not really good in English but I can understand often ur talk by writing it & translate ,but don't worry I will understand ur answer & thank you 🙂

2. You make this so easy to understand. Thank you for these great videos.

3. Hi MuralJoe, thanks for the great videos..I don't understand one thing though..you say subtractive color theory is used with the transparency of objects whereas for reflections the additive color theory is used..but how can that be considering that you mix reflections using paints (eg. pink berry + green leaves = brownish reflections)? While in another example, a yellowish sky and a blue water produced a gray reflection?! Why the two different results/theories? Thanks a lot!

4. Hi Joe! To your color theory. I have seen for long times as a rotating disk as colors mix on it. You can make something like a drill with a disc painted with the basic colors. If you start this disc your brain mixed the sequencing color. Is an illusion. I hope you understand my english. Greetings from Germany 🙂

5. its crazy but water isnt really ever "blue" persay.. its like a trick like how u explain light.
   A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.. the reason water is blue is #1 reflection, #2 minerals in the water #3 algae in the water. these are what make the water blue 😀

6. great video, its helped me a lot before i paint a mural

7. You are the best teacher that I have ever seen.
   I am from Iran.

8. I'm in love with your channel. Thanks for sharing all this knowledge, I've learnt a lot, you are a great teacher

9. You are a genious explaining things. You changed my perspective completely, THANKS, now I understand color in paintings.

10. i dont speak english, my head hurts but i wanna understand

11. What type of paint are you using? Acrylic? or alkyd?

12. Mural joe,you are the big painting,my english id bad.
    subtitulos spanish please

13. I love how you combine your left and right brain to explain everything, it's like a math and science person is teaching color, light and paint theory, and I love it!! You are brilliant and talented and a wonderful instructor. Thanks so much for sharing with us!!!

14. I have got to say that the videos about color theory have been the most useful to me personally. I really enjoy your other videos, but these ones helped me to understand what I was doing and why it worked. Thanks for that.

15. After all my years, i finally understand additive and substantive colours. Thank you!

16. You are a talented artist and an excellent teacher – thank you so much for sharing your vivid perspective with me and making your 'big-picture-techniques' available online. You are inspirational!

17. to answer your question I believe there is a saying.. blue is the invisible becoming visible.. there is trace amounts of blue frequency from blue light spreading out the farthest. that's why water looks clear inside or up close but if you get it in large amounts with natural light shining on it you can see the blue tint.. blue is low frequency so sometimes we pick it up and sometimes we don't.. but I heard it's teh same with people with blue eyes. In this article I read they were talking about how There is a difference between pigmented blue and reflective blue and most blue things in nature are reflective blue including a lot of animals feathers… I read somewhere… but stuff like blueberries is pigmented. But we can't really see without light so anything clear is still going to have a color.. like mirrors are slightly green and water is slightly blue as long as there is light that's what they'll reflect naturally, unless you force artificial light over top.. I think.. I might be getting confused.

18. You Rock Mural Joe!….My student loans would have been worth it if you were the teacher for all my classes!

19. dude, you are a genius… this seems like such a simple concept, but you have an understanding of it that I can't even comprehend….

20. Fantastic descriptions! Lot of thanks.

21. ABOUT THE WATER BEING BLUE… or not, my research thought me that it's all about the nature of blue light. Being the shortest wave lenght in the spectrum, it also is mutidirectional. Water will ABSORB all of the light wave lenghts (not reflecting them) except the blue which escapes the water 'trap' thanks to it's multidirectional nature. I painted a concrete swimming pool white and the water is always blue, regardless of the colour of the sky !

22. Gold

23. I would like to understand better this process. I was wondering how to make the color yellow. I know by mixing yellow and blue one can get green, and mixing red and blue one can get purple, etc. etc., but how can one get yellow by mixing colors? Yellow always came already made from the fabric, but I have never seen the color yellow made on a painting. It would be interesting? Can you do that Joe? Thanks for your expertise video. They are very interesting.

24. Love your paintings but this explanation video I watched 3 times and it still doesn't make sense.

25. hi joe,
    the last gray is the result of mixing the green with the purple plus a little orange ?

26. this one subject has been my consideration for years, some says subtractive color mixing is happen everytime a color of light hit an object…. when the object is got same wavelength with the color of the light, those wavelength will bounce to our eyes, and that is how we see color. some of this is happen to be true, for example, if you shine a yellow light through a blue object, it will appear no color but only lighter, because it subtractive, and both of them got no same wavelength.
    it also say that in subtractive mixing blue and red mixing will appear black, same reason got no same wavelength, but that is not happen if you shine a blue light to a red object. its somehow more addictive result (which is purple) than subtractive (black).

    i wish i get a video demo colorful light behavior when beam to any colorful object, just to make sure that subtractive mixing is happen. but every video always show light beam through a color filter (an transparent object), not to directly to an solid color object.

27. Maybe you could Call it rainbowcolour theory ? And I came to think of glazing techniques in painting and the importance of transparency and the opposition oppaqueness – but you do a really great job explaining the different color theories – truly inspiring

28. woah, he just used colors the way they work with leaves and the shit he drew looks like leaves without having the smallest thought of shaping it like leaves.

29. great artist and teacher. everything was explained very well

30. very very helpful videos~ love your tutorials and the way you paint, the way you explain~

31. Thank you!
    But what you call grey – to me looks caramel.
    I have to think about this for a whilexand make a wheel i guess.
    Thank you very much!

32. paint an actual painting and explain all this.

33. Wow – I have never heard it explained from the different systems Thank you Joe –

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