I have only used cyan, magenta, yellow and white paint for several years now. Daler Rowney, Winsor & Newton, and even Sennelier produce acrylic and oil paints in "process" colours - ie. the same colours as the CMYK printing process. I don't even need to use black because if you get the correct proportions all three colours make black - in fact a far richer, colourful black than one from a tube of black. It's a brilliant way of creating the exact colours you want, and I don't have to carry a great sack of paints with me - just the four tubes! Thank you - I enjoyed your video.
Very Clear! As a secondary physics teacher in the US, I always struggle trying to convince my students that the entirety of their elementary art education was a lie. (And now that I teach it, I know why creating purple was always so hard for me when I was young!)
YES! I had an art teacher in college who had us make a color wheel using the acrylic paint colors that were purchased on our supply list at the beginning of the semester. We were not allowed to purchase any other tubes of paint and I recall it being next to impossible to mix and achieve purple!! I believe we were forced to use from our supply list cobalt blue and cadmium red to try and get purple, and throw in some titanium white, if it helps!😖 I don’t think anyone got anything but a medium grade on that assignment, which was totally unfair!!!😫
Good work, Scott. I also teach art and find it difficult to teach people about primary colours because they are stuck on the idea that they MUST be red, yellow and blue... even when I do a quick hands-on proof like you did in your video.
Thank you! I have always painted a very monochrome or subdued pallete but recently was trying to revisit colour theory and could not paint a colour wheel. Coming up with a similar conclusion about primaries not being primaries!! What a revelation.
Congratulations! For the first time I saw someone speaking the truth about the primary colors. When I was a child I was taught wrong about the colors in school. I enjoyed painting since I was a child and did not understand why when mixing red and blue I got some kind of brown, not purple as they said I would get. Today I use Carmin which is very close to Magenta, also use Prussian Blue that is close to Cyan.
THANK YOU! I have been trying to understand color for quilting, and have been befuddled by the choices of oil paints my painting teacher had us use. She had us work with two warms, cadmium red and yellow; with black and titanium white; and with four cools, ultramarine blue, lemon yellow, veridian green, and alizarin crimson. From those eight paints, we'd mix all our colors. Your video explains that the crimson is a magenta, and I figure the green must have contained cyan. So BINGO, you just explained a mystery from my childhood!
Interesting idea. But it's still not even that cut and dry. Color theory yields a deeper rabbit hole to get into vs. what most classes on the subject start to cover. Subtractive colors can get shifted around even a little more, as there are still some more factors to consider. Translucent vs. opaque colors behave differently when layered or mixed. (Which is why what you're explaining in this video is more common in printing processes with translucent colors vs. painting and you'll keep getting those same old arguments. Also why tempura, water colors, acrylics, and oils behave differently, and not just from a material perspective.) Some pigments are mixed with black or white to shift the shade instead of their complimentary colors. Different paints shift intensity differently when they dry. (Lighter/darker or more/less saturated.) And then you have phosphorescence or fluorescence in some cases, where a pigment absorbs light but re-emits it on a slightly different wavelength. What it absorbs may make it stronger/brighter in another color. The nature of the bonding medium used with a pigment may even affect refraction, with iridescence in extreme cases. (Can give the appearance of an oily sheen, or those effects of mica or plastic purposely added.) And not to mention that environmental lighting is likely to drive the palette, as light is the source of the color we perceive. (Painting something while indoors under tungsten light vs. outdoors in sun can yield different results, and one wont necessarily look good in a different lighting situation vs. the other.) Because the way those things factor in with paints, RGB on the computer screen is often easier to predict than some of the things that can happen with paints. And that's with variation in gamma, color adjustments, and color bit depth that affect gamut. To sum it up, color wheels are merely a guideline. The way to really know is with experience in working with your particular medium.
RBG works on a computer screen because it's an additive display. You start with black and add more power to either the red, green or blue dots in a pixel. With painting, it is by nature subtractive, since you can only remove natural light. A canvas doesn't supply its own light, so the subtractive color wheel works better.
I notice lots of people are confused!!! Good job Scott, everything is correct. Primaries are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Black is for Shading, White is for Tinting and the mix of BW (different grades of Gray) is to get color Tone. Obviously you can obtain Gray even without using Black, by adding a color's opposite on the color wheel, and that makes sense if you think that mixing 100% of all the primaries will give you Black. Blue and Red aren't primaries, if you use them as primaries you'll get dark and dull colors. Hope you video awakens the most!
Very informative. I was a painting major in college, a graphic designer for a living, and most recently, a screenprinter. Needless to say, in the offset print world, the premise behind CMYK is unchallenged. As a screenprinter, though, I see people try to get a good rich pink by mixing a bright red with white, which can't be done. Magenta in white is what works. Cyan and yellow for a bright green. Odd that this concept hasn't been applied to painting before.
Thanks for explaning the tertiary right, but you just made me flunk my whole education, and i´m a painter, never the less you gave me a whole new perspective, not even in colours, but in all life, i should have looked inside my printer long time ago, stupid me :D
YOUR AN ABSOLUTE CHAMPION, Best video ever. It was hard to find this authentic info, i was taught years ago but needed to refresh as i attempted a colour wheel...to replace my original done 10 years ago, as i misplaced it, done with daler and rowney gouache...but couldn't understand what i was doing wrong.....im all better now...fantastic... thanks for creating this!
For all the reasons you just explained, I've used the Robert Burridge colour wheel. Now I understand why it works so well... PS. I taught both my kids the proper names of all the colours and the two of them constantly argue with friends and teacher. I love it!
Watched another youtube on this subject and was thoroughly confused. Yours makes it very clear, thank you! Right around 3:07 is when the (yellow) light bulb went off.
fluorescent pink ,fluorescent blue (that is actually cian) and fluorescent yellow , that can be found in acrylic paint , are very near to the ideal primaries in terms of hue and saturation . using them with black and white has given me good results .
Goddamn it! This makes so much sense! I always used to wonder why the colour cells in a tv never matched a colour wheel! It also made no sense because the current colour wheel dismisses the colour value of pink! A colour TRUTH is meant to be inclusive not dismissive which explains why the RBY colour wheel is called a colour theory. Very excellent and love your artwork too. I actually always use Magenta to mix my purple and pink. Always trust the gut! Thank you so very very much Scott! Brilliant!
You have to be complimented for this Scott. As soon as I saw my kids struggling to mix paints according the traditional colour wheel theory, I went out and bought 5 large bottles of poster paint at discount prices. I selected the closest I could find to cyan, magenta and yellow, plus white and black. I took a design course and had to make a colour wheel. It didn't work as well with the schools paints as it did with my kids' paints. But, old ways die hard, no matter how easier the new ways are.
Bless you bud! You have seriously come to my rescue. I can't explain how much pain bad colour wheels have caused me in the real world. I'm a designer, and the theory never matched up with what I could see leaving me at a loss when trying to explain colour choices. Like, cyan always looked a more 'complimentary' complimentary to red than green. But, the 'rules' said otherwise!
I teach Color Theory on an Design Course in Goiânia, Brazil and my students make exercizes with yellow, cyan and magenta paints to make the color wheel and it works very well. Your video helps me to confirm what we already ar doing. Good to see that other people work this way, iven than a lot of books dont chage their concepts.
There is no spoon! Loved this. The most clear, concise and helpful information. Wish I'd found you sooner, after my two days of brain ache trying to understand Munsell theory! Thanks, Scott x
Really outstanding video Scott. And presented in an entertaining way. I just want to clarify what you said towards the end when you said that people might think blue is a primary colour that can't be mixed and then go on to show that blue can be mixed (from cyan and magenta). This is a nice demo. But whether something can or can't be mixed has got nothing to do with whether it is a primary or not. Red, yellow, blue, cyan and magenta can all be produced by mixture if we choose the right things to mix from. It's another one of those fallacies that we are taught at school that the primaries cannot be produced by mixture. Clearly if we start with a primary system based on red, yellow and blue then we cannot make any of those primaries from mixtures of the other two or from any of their mixtures. But at the same time if we start with a primary system based on cyan, yellow and blue then we cannot make any of those primaries from mixtures of the other two or from any of their mixtures. The choice of primaries is arbitrary. I would argue - and I am sure you would agree - that a good choice of primaries is one that can generate a large range or gamut of colours. It turns out that cyan, magenta and yellow is a much better choice than red, yellow and blue. But whether the primaries are pure or can be mixed is a red hering I think. For further information on my thinking see colourware.org/2011/03/19/ryb-primaries/ colourware.org/2009/07/08/what-is-a-colour-primary/ Steve
I see what you mean Steve. However we do need to remember that it's colour theory not colour fact. In reality the c, m and y we have as printers or artists will never be perfect fully saturated primaries limiting the gamut until we use other tubes of paint. When I state that a primary colour cannot be mixed, I mean by ANY other colours. It's fairly obvious you won't mix any colour with a mixture of the other 2 regardless of what triad you choose. Fully saturated primary Cyan, Magenta and Yellow CANNOT be mixed with any other 2 pigments. I promote this colour theory for artists as a guide as to how to best understand colour mixing. If you want the best gamut and are only using 3 colours CMY is the best. The choice of primaries is not arbitrary. ask any printer manufacturer who uses 3 colours to choose anything other than CMY and they will not produce any acceptable results. The key to mixing vivid colour without polluting the mix is understanding where the primaries are in the colour wheel. Many artists think they can mix vivid green by mixing blue and yellow. By understanding the correct primaries, we understand that we must not use anything beyond cyan unless we want a tertiary or 'muted' green. It's not about limiting artists to the use of only 3 colours, its really about understanding how to mix them. More information on this is shown in my video Colour: Mixing with Primary Paint
Scott Naismith Well if we are limiting ourselves to color “fact” theory we find that the whole problem lays within using TRIADIC “primaries” in the first place and thus you are just chasing another rabbit down another rabbit hole. Factually, subtractive mixing requires every paint to be at “optimal” value/chroma at all tangential points along the wheel thus making ALL of them “primaries” IFF we want the largest color gamut possible from paint. Therefore, CYM are actually NOT the only “primaries” that can not be mixed by ANY other colors. Today of course we know that there are more than 3 “primaries” with hardly anyone actually choosing paints at the “optimal” Spectrum Triad positions and these paints are always close to RYB. You hold up the printing industry as your “primary” example and the fact is that they hold the same factual theory as the rest of us: The BEST Biased RYB (also conveniently labeled CYM) plus the the BEST arbitrarily chosen (that meets our suitable needs) other “non mixable” paints=the largest mixing range possible for us. Hence the printing industry follows the factual working palette that suits their arbitrary needs and is also why they invented Hexa and Hepachrome printers. What paints are “primary” today may not be “primary” tomorrow and history has shown this factually and a better pigment discovered may not be suitable for the printing industry or others. Yes Theoretical CYM is best for Subtractive EQUALATERAL TRIADS ONLY based on trichromatic vision of LMS Theory but color TRIADS are for grade school Theoretical Practice and it does not matter which paints you choose to show the example as long as they are not “true” mixing opponents. But it would be best if we started them out with bias/value/chroma type theory with the understanding of basic subtractive theory and do it with vivid colors because the kiddos love vivid colors a bit more than others but soon discover that the world becomes actually quite gray along with our mixes. It’s a fact that we always “pollute” our mixes. What you are really doing here is trying to teach an RGB light mixing system to your fellow subtractive paint mixing artists by replacing the fallible traditional system of RYB with another fallacy of CYM. CYM is the THEORETICAL TRIADIC OPTIMUM of Light/Vision for Subtractive THEORY but you wanted to stick with “factual” subtractive paint mixing. No matter what triadic system we use to “replicate” the gamut of color vision, we soon learn that all fail to completely “replicate” the gamut and the only “true primaries” is that of the Theoretical LMS and those are arbitrary and have imaginary as well as “real” colors and we discover that we ACTUALLY need all tubes of paint to be “primary” IF we want the largest possible gamut. I know this is redundant but redundancy is key to learning.
@@ScottNaismithArtist but then you have to admit that you can not produce a "true" red and blue from magenta and cyan you are only going to get a shade of the two colors.
@@richiejourney1840 Richie I think you have said what I with my very limited knowledge was inclined to believe, that it is not a static thing it depends what color you want to get. In pure pigment we have many more than RGB or CMY so as artists, if we want a wide spectrum of vibrant greens we may use a certain configuration of natural pigments. If you want violets you might use another basis. I don't think we need to have one 3 color primary model to rule them all when there are so many natural pigments available that will each combine to produce different segments of the wheel most vibrantly. Am I way off? Is the basis of the argument not that one 3 color model can more fully cover the spectrum? Why do we need one model over the other? I understand wanting to be able to mix as much as possible from as few pigments as possible, it seems that it depends on what color you are trying to achieve. Interested to hear more from you as I may have misinterpreted
really interesting. I am a technician and a bit of a amateur physicist. and was looking for a video to help me solve a dispute between others about primaries. Most get stuck on - but blue and yellow make green- and cant see. this will help. I love your work. thanks
The red-yellow-blue ,3 primary model has never really worked that well for creating a complete colour gamut. The cyan-yellow-magenta model is a bit better but it produces pretty crappy oranges / violets...3 colours will never do it because some colours are just not mixable. Try and mix a full strength orange from 2 cadmiums...you can't_it will never be as saturated as that straight out of a tube. If you can't mix a colour , then it must be a primary!! Therefore cad orange_diox violet_phthalo green( YS) should be primaries. Also , try mixing a brilliant transparent orange from two cads_it won't happen. So, it seems we need another '' primary orange '' ie transparent pyrrole orange (PO71) for glazes. What every painter wants,is to mix clear, clean colours without too much hassle. You can always make mud any time you like. There is something called ''substance uncertainty'' with pigments which means you can't really predict with accuracy what a colour mix will be. This is due to chemistry and subtractive process. With all the brands using same names but different formulations and fillers, loadings, and pigment qualities, it is a bit of a mine field to find your way through. From handprint.com there are many models that predict colours and none of them come anywhere near replicating Nature. So, you wanna learn colour mixing, forget theory and get your hands dirty. Test the paints you use __grey them out, white 'em out, black 'em out and mix every single colour with all your others. Try limited palettes first ,see what you can do with a few colours then add to your palette to cover holes in the gamut . Or don't. There are no wrong colours_just the ones you don't want !!. The closer two colours are on the wheel , the cleaner the mix...180 degrees away is grey.Thus,if you had a relatively even spacing of colours around the wheel, you will have a pretty good chance of mixing just about anything you want. Forget all about primaries and secondaries, just look at the fucking colour and learn to navigate to any other colour from where you are with the minimum amount of mixing.Takes time but it works.
@John Hooper but projectors can't project black, so their background uses white pigments but acts like black. That's why projectors are best viewed in darkness - then the white screen is black as it should be, but without absorbing the projection like a black screen would.
I figured this out one day after reading a book from the 50's on how the eye works. I was so confused by my findings. This video is just what I needed to confirm my understanding. Thank you. Now back to relearning to mix colors.
Thank you! I learned about the difference in colour theory a little while ago and as you said, immediately recognized the printer colours. I’m starting makeup and we were just taught “RBY” and it’s killing me, because we don’t do people’s faces with light, we use pigments. Not paint, but pigmentation. I’ve gone so far as to buy artist markers and sketch paper to do my own colour theory diagrams (half to do notes, half to prove my point). I have to do the grade school RBY for my exam, but wondering if it’s actually the best for colour matching. I’ve seen argument that it is, even though it’s not a true pigment colour wheel - as the “primaries” are secondary in pigment. Part of me is wondering if this is simply indoctrination “what we were taught might be wrong but is still best” or true.... I also noticed green and pink are opposites and girls have a penchant for matching these two colours together.
I saw some of your paintings they are daring and exciting. They look like flower gardens in the sky! Eat your heart out Van gogh. They are very good and very original.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! This is THE MOST VALUABLE art tutorial I have ever seen and arguably the most valuable ever presented. I knew the traditional color wheel is wrong. I am not experienced enough to figure out the correct one. You are very generous to share this knowledge.
Love this. I teach graphic design and my students are going to enjoy hearing the news about the color wheels we have been making are WRONG! :-) It's always right there in front of us and most of us can't see it because we have been trained to color inside the lines.
Good video, thanks. The main thing I'd like to add is that there are no lights that can stimulate our colour receptors directly, even blue light stimulates the red and green receptors in our eyes to some degree. So the choice for colour primaries for light is somewhat arbitrary, and has been standardised for our computer monitors and printers by international convention. Indeed the original suggestion for three primary colours by Young was red, green and violet, if you thought that way then you would have blue as a secondary for visible light and so would be compatible with blue as a primary for paint (though not red). So there are no primaries that can make all the colours we see, which is why the impressionists were so insistent on using pure colours out of the tube, you get colours that way that you can never get by any mixture of other paints. You could never for instance mix a pure cadmium red from other colours. The best you can get is an approximate set of primaries that makes nearly all the colours apart from the most vivid ones. That is what the RGB and CYM system is - an approximation that can create almost all the colours we need, unless you need a really pure colour "out of the tube".
You might like my article on science20.com where I discuss whether ETs might experience light the same way we experience sound and vice versa. It helps brings out some of the idiosyncracies of how we percieve sound and light. These differences are not intrinsic to light and sound as such, are much more to do with how we perceive them. www.science20.com/robert_inventor/blog/close_encounters_tune_just_fun_idea_or_music_one_easiest_ways_communicate_ets-125915
I use this theory all the time when I paint. I use pthalo blue (a transparent) and printer's magenta (also a transparent) to get a rich midnight blue, my go-to color in acrylic. But I started out in graphic design, photography, and art concurrently. It made a lot more sense that way. Love this video and I will use it to explain the theory to others.
Terri Light absolutely spot on. While I've been within an art school education, I've taken as much influence from graphics and have lectured in graphics. But even within that world, there has been an acceptance that RYBhas a place in pigment theory. Totally false. Within graphic design teaching, I had to go against conventional syllabus when teaching colour
Hi Scott i put this colour theory in to practise using oil pastels my painting i did using these colours sold at an exhibition before it even started!! Colours mixes were vibrant i had a few comment saying i had used the wrong blue but the paintings sold i used white and three colours closest to magenta, cyan and yellow. All the doubters should try it out and see what happens thanks Scott
I studied color for 10 years and your right about all of it. And your right just because it's true doesn't mean you have to paint with them that way. Some people here said somethings about names of color in different languages. In printing they use what is called DIC numbers not names to mix the right colors. The CYMK is secondary to RGB in that it can back mix to the primaries or go forward to the tertiary colors in subtractive mixing. The only difference is in RGB in light the colors get lighter when mixed and in pigment the colors get darker--same wheel. Now with tube paint you have to know where that color is on the RGB color wheel and how pure or how bias that color is. All international color standards are set by something called CIE light waves--it looks more like a horse shoe.
That was a great video. It was incredibly informative and helpful. You really helped explain things in ways that were easy to understand, visually and orally. We are learning about this in psychology and I didn't understand the difference as well as I wanted to, but this was a huge help!
I've always thought its almost conspiracy level how cyan is never mentioned when talking about colors or the typical rainbow spectrum... even though you can clearly see a distinct "light" band for yellow and cyan, on each side of green. The classic "ROY G BIV" is listed, even though cyan is always there but lumped in as "skyblue or lightblue".... while most would think of blue as the darker navyblue or even "indigo" color. Magenta is also the other color almost never mentioned but very important for color schemes. Cyan has an important role in various religions or cultures as well for being the color of the sky or a tropical water, compared to the darker blue/indigo color of space/night sky. I really like cyan, and its variants like aquamarine or turquoise, they are such a vibrant shade of blue/green. I have often wondered if our "RYB" color cones in the eye are actually magenta, yellow, and cyan... with the rods being a black/white... giving us the same CMYK (cyan magenta yellow black) color scheme that some ink printers use. It would make sense to distinguish the more light/pure color tones which can look like RGB when stacked and layered as opposed to RGB... but who knows, colors and light vs paint are two different worlds.
Thanks very much for this. I've been struggling with my understanding of magenta. I did a painting of a camellia a couple of years ago which was bright, luminous magenta and discovered I couldn't mix it from any of my reds and blues, including alizarin crimson, rose madder, rowney rose. In the end I went and bought some other tubes and it wasn't until I bought permanent magenta that I could finally get something close to the colour. It has puzzled me ever since because I was taught the big lie at school that everything could be mixed from red, blue and yellow. Thanks again. :)
Thank you very much. I am teaching junior high art and have one group that is unusually gifted. I have not done color theory with them yet (they have been patiently and with surprising enthusiasm drawing with graphite thus far!). I would like them to know modern color theory as well as traditional because it is so very helpful to understand both. Traditional color theory gets a bad rap in some circles but it is understandable historically speaking why red, yellow, and blue were considered primary colors because of the pigments available to artists. And yet, we ought to be honest with students and give them both sides of the story. Peace, Arnold
Solipsism practice? The beginning of the video was good, but at end... RGB are primaries for all light based systems. You can't get a CMYK projector or monitor/smartphone. Any lighting technician or photographer knows that. If You want a holywar: light is primary, no light - no reflection/scattring.
This is for paint in which you can get cyan, magenta and yellow paints. Some manufacturers do label these colours e.g. Daler Rowney's System 3 acrylics offers Process Cyan, Process Magenta, and Process Yellow, which allow students interesting experiments with mixing these true primaries with a bog standard introductory set of acrylics. I'm using the System 3 10 tube Introductory set + Process Cyan and Process Magenta. I'm afraid creating a series of colour reference cards to see what is produced. My conclusions so far are that one should use the colours that suit your subject. The true primaries of the colours are potent and work best for art that isn't based on nature as there are rarely pure colours in nature. One can do landscapes for example, with the traditional "earth" pigments, but adding the true primaries can add something to your arsenal if used appropriately.
Scott, I have a background of being an RAF Photographer and later teaching Physics but now an old duffer took up WC and OIls aabout 3 years ago. I have found especially dealing with paint companies support staff tring to use my Physics and Photography knowledge to tie in with my painting a total disaster, even tried to use the Stephen Quiller wheel but found no true logical techniques to create as close as you can colours required. Your background of your degree and time spent in printing certainly gives me further credibilty in your very good analogy of the red and blue Matrix pills. Have watched a few times and as others have said here it goes against much what we accept as the norm, so I will certainly watch a few more times and see if it helps. Also want to say, have found it very hard to finalize what I want to paint and have to say your fantastic use of colours for landscape certainly inspires me to do some thing similar, I kinda tend to like painting landscapes but have to say many of the loose styles of well known and good tutors on here (you know the ones) always ender up with plain and drab looking paintings. Much of their work is the abilty to correct and go over many times after leaving to dry, I really like your emotive (which I am ) and one strokes with a brush or palette knife with out muddying the colours BUT (LOL) I find is bloody hard to do, now I knw far more about the true skill of brush work and the palette knife in not producing a mess buta work of art - you really have my admiration. Unfortunatelt at 67 I don't have the years left to reach such mastery of paint, colour and emotion you have but I am going to give it a go.
Yes I'm aware about orange and also aware that languages do not cover all colours, mostly because colour is an analogous concept and language is not. There's a tribe in africa that has several words between cyan and blue meaning they can much easier visually differentiate these hues. Not sure where my mistake is. The most important colours to label with words from a young age are RGB and CMY every other word (like orange) will also increase our visual perception and differentiation.
P.S. If your wondering what the K is in CYMK it stands for black. Black is necessary in order to get some areas dark enough because the colors won't mix down in subtraction enough. The yellow is too light it's the next step to white. They get the black by using yellow to filter the picture that separates the dark blue and then they replace the the color blue with black ink or paint. It take a long time before you can look at any color or tube of paint and know how bias it is or where it belongs on the accurate RGB wheel.Sometimes this knowledge is called color spacing.Some tube colors are higher intensity or darker than CYMK can produce. The across the board system has limits for good reasons but it is all true what he said the true color wheel. Artist have been learning to paint by ear for thousands or years. Note: Da vinci considered green a primary color.
The reason why CMY inks used in printers don't give a true black is the inaccuracy and imprecision of their colors, cyan doesn't look like cyan, it's just a blue with a little bit if white without a hint of green, cyan is used to have a hint of green, magenta doesn't look like magenta, it looks like it's red already, magenta used to be more purplish than that. Also, the reason is they don't mix but layer each color on top which makes the last color to be layered on top will slightly dominate. Try to compare these two images: * upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/CMYK_subtractive_color_mixing.svg/1024px-CMYK_subtractive_color_mixing.svg.png - this one's used in printers * upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/CMY_ideal_version.svg/1024px-CMY_ideal_version.svg.png - this one is the real CMY, the exact opposite of RGB (note that it creates true black color when mixed)
Substitute the secondaries and primaries with CMY and RGB and everything else in the 1st video is valid. Good point about desaturating yellow. This is all about perception. Many perceive what is actually blue/cyan for blue. Blue is actually very close to 'indigo' or purple. In my other video, I've actually used blue to desaturate yellow. However if it's lemon yellow (nearer green) you'd choose purple. People will argue they've made green with blue/yellow but their blue is actually dark cyan.
Honestly, I was told I’m color blind from when I was in high school and as an adult now who’s an artist and learning to use color theory in makeup. Because I like wearing makeup. I strongly believed that cyan, yellow and magenta must be the original colors unlike the primary colors. I feel confident in my painting and makeup skills to use the cmyk color wheel/chart for makeup, art, and fashion.
I am a fibre artist and am fascinated by your colour wheel. I wonder how my instructors would feel if I showed up at class with cyan, magenta and yellow. I know that in my next colour dying I will be using your wheel.
My bachelor of fine Arts degree was a RIPOFF! Okay no wait I graduated from college in the early 80s. I always had a had trouble making purples. I made my own fluid paints back then by hand. But I could never make a good purple or green. The green I had more luck with cuz I like to Spring Green and I would start with yellow. And I guess that I had more success with that because it's a true primary. But I always loved the colors that I got mixing store-bought purples and magenta's with the yellow. Now I know why thank you so much. I still don't understand why they did that? And what did the Old Masters do? Gosh this brings up a whole new world of questions.
but there comes a time when it has to be clear what words pertain to which colors so we can progress in our discussion of colors. Thanks @scottnaismith for this awesome video!
I thought the theory was very interesting and, quite honestly, it does make sense. It's a very 21st Century view of color theory. As an artist (and an art teacher), however, I disagree that the traditional color wheel is inadequate and that it should be discarded. Throughout art history, the color wheel has been visualized in different forms so there are many theories about how color should be properly organized. I don't see why there should just be one and, most definitely, I don't see how this theory being promoted is the answer to everything. After all, the traditional color wheel, as we know it, has been responsible for a tremendous amount of beautiful art. If you're having a difficult time mixing the color you want then, by all means, try this CMYK color wheel out.
The colour wheel is a tool which can be used for a better understanding of what should happen when colour mixing. The CMY wheel is the more accurate one to use for this. Most accomplished painters of the past (and present) have combined colours well by instinct, eye and experience despite the non existence of the true colour wheel. There was no wheel reference at all for Da Vinci, but he was still able to produce great works of art. Modern technology and science has proven the failings of RYB, traditionalists remain in denial. If you are going to use a colour wheel, it might as well be the right one. Another point about the traditional wheel is that most people see cyan and label it as blue so they get better mixing results. Much of our problem is in language. We still refer to 'redheads' because orange is a relatively new word!
***** You are right.. the problem is in language. The problem is people get caught up in the language though not that they get confused by it. Who cares about numbers. This is color not math. We are people not machines. You should not let a machine measure your color when in the end it is eyes that will judge. We are artists not scientists. Our work should be measured with our eyes for the viewer will judge with theirs. Who the hell is going to go look at a piece of art and take out their science and machines to make sure your colors are scientifically accurate? And accurate to what? Who's to say what any one color in any given piece should be anyway?
D Ha. D, I think you are right in many ways. Math does not exist in Nature. It's a man-made idea to help us understand the world around us. Kind of like the stars in the sky. We made up constellations to make order of them -- and constellations vary by culture. So, what may look like a Lion for one can be something else for another. Who's to say which one is right? Like Blue or Cyan? The color wheel, in all its many forms, is certainly a helpful tool -- particularly in mixing color. To be honest, in my 20 years of making art I never really used one. I always just go with the flow and use my intuition, as Scott mentioned to his reply above. I have made many mistakes in trying to get the colors I want, but I think that can be an enjoyable part of making paintings. Plus it can lead to really weird colors that you can't even name or replicate.
Potemkin I like the last of what you said.. well particularly that part. Making weird colors and such. It's always better to be a little off. Otherwise it looks like a machine did it, no? I would also offer an example as to my point before - My mom has a bathroom. Walls and mirrors and shower and all were perfectly vertical/horizontal as far as she could tell. And as far as I could tell and as far as anyone else could tell for that matter. The she had it remodeled and the contractors took out their "technology" and math and made it numerically correct. Now all the walls and mirror and shower are numerically/scientifically correct, right? Except now it looks off to everyone who sees it. Everything is crooked. So I suppose the question is this- Do you want your art to BE "mathematically/scientifically" correct or do you want it to LOOK correct? As an aside I apologize for coming off assholeish lol. I just realized after reading my previous response.
D Some interesting comments on this thread. The meeting of science and art... I'm sure Leonardo davinci would have liked the debate. However, my intentions with the science side of this video is only to attempt to prove why primaries of painting are CMY. I suppose just like knowing what horizontal and vertical are, helps you decide whether, by instinct, something is 'straight'. Getting good results from instinctive colour use takes years of practise, but you'll get there quicker if you understand the correct theory from the outset. Some people struggle to mix the colour they are striving for and mostly it's down to confusion with RYB. e.g. 'Red and blue make purple, right? so Ill mix my cad red and my manganese blue...' WAY OFF!
Good thing you use CMY also, I have made a video for the same reason but I also proved that red is a secondary and I also mentioned that black is primary. That video is called the truth paint. I hope you watch it because I failed at making it several times.
Great video. I just added to my article on color on the inventorArtist site. Interestingly before I made the article I searched youtube and google for people pushing this system but there was nothing. Your video didn't come forward for me until today...
Who knew color theory was such a hot topic? If you don't believe Scott here then google a Munsell color wheel. Albert developed his model at the turn of the 20th century and sure enough there is red right across from blue/green and magenta across from bright green and so on. This isn't some goofy idea this crazy Glaswegian just made up, artists and printers have known about this for a hundred years. Still don't believe? Check out the guy's art. I think he knows how to mix color. I took the blue pill long before watching this video.
I like the explanation very much. I will have to apply the concept to actually understand it fully. Also mixing and color matching and values matching are to life will be a new challenge.
Check out this book and there is a very nice tinted engraving plate inside the front cover. I think the answer to why the colour wheel as taught by art teachers today is wrong might be apparent. Chromatography; Or, A Treatise on Colours and Pigments, And of Their Powers in Painting by George Field published in 1841 As a physicist and have always wondered why 'art' classes get this wrong and teach Red/Yellow/Blue instead of Cyan/Yellow/Magenta even through printing companies have had it right since the invention of the coloured printing press. It might be because the definitions of Red and blue have changed over the years. This could also be linked to the lack of modern vocabulary regarding these newly evolved colours. What used to be called red and blue - we would now call magenta and cyan... but the art textbooks and teachers have not yet caught up maybe?? So glad that someone has got it right and explained it to the world :)
YES! watched this and did exactly what you said. Three colors only CMY. I wish I could share the painting...all in one session...this is the answer I was looking for....you are my favorite teacher....gretchen, palm beach gardens, fl us
Use the additive (light) color wheel to plan your color scheme because that's how we see. Use the subtractive (pigment) wheel to mix your paints, because that's how pigments interact with each other.
I see your last comment here was 5 years ago. Anyway, as a 3 mo beginner, you answered a here to fore unanswered question. Why do all the sites on paint use RGB and not RYB. If nothing else you give me a clearer understanding of colors. Important to me because I am determined to (learn) to mix my own colors. By using your chart, I can now mix with a better visualization. Thank you.
@Nano Taboada, Yeah, you might find you need transparency of cyan as the other 2 are transparent. Try pthalo blue in addition for glazing or darker hues. Think your right about permanent rose actually being a better bet than magenta in that range, although the addition of magenta may give more options for your darks the same as pthalo does.
I do a lt of dyeing and work with primary colours to mix my own secondaries etc. I use cyan, yellow and Magenta. Another thing i do, if I use common brands of dyes, is deliberately split them, with surprising results, which backs up all Scott's claims in this video. Red and blue do not make purple but have given me golds, tea,l and moss greens, because of the way the dyes have been mixed. The only thing I can add is to check whether you are dealing with a single pigment or a blend, because that really can have weird and wonderful results which are fine in dyeing, but not on a masterpiece on a canvas.
Just to elaborate - the fact that CYMK, Cyan Yellow Magenta Black, is used by professional quality printers does show that cyan, yellow, and magenta work well as primary subtractive colours to produce all other colours. It has stood the test of time.
Excellent info on the true colour wheel. My only complaint is that when suggesting actual tube paints to use for magenta and cyan, there was no mention of an appropriate yellow to use with them. I use lemon yellow and cadmium yellow in my 6 colour palette for the RGB system, which have blue and red biases respectively so I presume neither of these would be appropriate.
tfw you realize that the complimentary color of cyan is red, magenta is green and yellow is blue............ add that to the fact the previous video revealed: desaturation is adding a complimented color to a pure color............. tldr; primary colors are desaturated with secondary colors and vice versa o.O
Beautiful video, you are the only one I've seen that views the colours as they are! It's a brilliant source to my communication design master project! :)
The part you said about color and vocabulary. I read an article stating that Russians are better at distinguishing different shades of blue than English speakers because they have more words for them. Also an interesting read on color mixing is "Yellow and Blue Don't Make Green".
When we made colour separation negatives we used a blue filter to make the yellow printer, a green filter to make the magenta printer, and a red filter to make the cyan printer. An accurate colour wheel should have these pairs opposite each other as these are true complementary pairs. In the real world there are no perfectly pure primary colours so things don't work out exactly as the theory suggests, but using CMY is going to get you closer than any other system when mixing pigments or dyes.
As a colorblind, it's bs to me orange takes three spaces while blue-green and red-violet are literally one slice each. Maybe normal vision sees more orange shades but there's definetly also tradition. This color wheel should be named: Red, orange, Yellow, chartreuse, Green, teal, Cyan, azure, Blue, violet, Magenta, pink
You would have really nailed it if you had shown the mixing of a "secondary" red, along with the "secondary" blue demonstration. I'm not sure if you applied some filters to your video or if the camera was adjusting it's white balance, but the "magenta" you showed at the end looked like a deep red.
RGB has a better gamut and using CMYK mode in photoshop will imitate the reduced gamut of printing. The artist using many tubes of paint with different properties gives the painter less of these limitations giving an opportunity for a maximized gamut. Despite what some assume, I do not 'promote' the use of only 3 tubes although my reduced plein air pallete is sometimes reduced to light and dark CMY.
When our curriculum stipulated we do handprints with red , yellow and blue I demonstrated (with sky blue) what it actually does with red and BTW its actually difficult to get orange with mixing handprints as well because yellow is quite impotent. So I said for those reasons we're going to use "pink". It wasn't magenta because it couldn't make a true red but it sure made a vibrant purple. BTW I'm glad you don't pronounce white as wite like most people. Save the "wh".
Vermeer? I'm not sure how he comes into it. He had a penchant for blue vs yellow (see his most famous work 'Girl with The Pearl Earring'). This is consistent with complementaries of the cmy wheel. You might mean Van Eyck though who used Green/ red combinations. In any case colour theory and the colour wheel were not in existence back then so they all used instinct. I believe vermeers instincts to be better than that of Van Eyck.
I think it depends on your color setup. If you use photoshop, you can change the setup from RGB to CMYK. This is primarily for use when printing, as photoshop will only offer you a pallet that will print using those colors. But, as Scott said, when working on a computer screen, you're mixing light, not pigment. However, if you switch to CMY coloring in photoshop, you will get the colors to behave closer to this.
Ultramarine blue is still waaaay brighter blue than what you mixed up, so.... yeah I'd say it's primary. You just can't mix colors to get something that bright and vivid. Your science is correct of course, but your demonstration and results are preposterous. I strongly advise painters to use an RYB primary mixing system and leave CMYK for printers (which as you know still fail to produce the full color spectrum from the component colors CMYK.)
BOBimus Rex I think it depends if you are painting with light or pigment. Or if you are painting on a white or dark ground so you will know how to make your colors pop
I have only used cyan, magenta, yellow and white paint for several years now. Daler Rowney, Winsor & Newton, and even Sennelier produce acrylic and oil paints in "process" colours - ie. the same colours as the CMYK printing process. I don't even need to use black because if you get the correct proportions all three colours make black - in fact a far richer, colourful black than one from a tube of black. It's a brilliant way of creating the exact colours you want, and I don't have to carry a great sack of paints with me - just the four tubes! Thank you - I enjoyed your video.
Very Clear! As a secondary physics teacher in the US, I always struggle trying to convince my students that the entirety of their elementary art education was a lie.
(And now that I teach it, I know why creating purple was always so hard for me when I was young!)
YES! I had an art teacher in college who had us make a color wheel using the acrylic paint colors that were purchased on our supply list at the beginning of the semester. We were not allowed to purchase any other tubes of paint and I recall it being next to impossible to mix and achieve purple!! I believe we were forced to use from our supply list cobalt blue and cadmium red to try and get purple, and throw in some titanium white, if it helps!😖 I don’t think anyone got anything but a medium grade on that assignment, which was totally unfair!!!😫
Good work, Scott. I also teach art and find it difficult to teach people about primary colours because they are stuck on the idea that they MUST be red, yellow and blue... even when I do a quick hands-on proof like you did in your video.
Thank you! I have always painted a very monochrome or subdued pallete but recently was trying to revisit colour theory and could not paint a colour wheel. Coming up with a similar conclusion about primaries not being primaries!! What a revelation.
Congratulations! For the first time I saw someone speaking the truth about the primary colors. When I was a child I was taught wrong about the colors in school. I enjoyed painting since I was a child and did not understand why when mixing red and blue I got some kind of brown, not purple as they said I would get. Today I use Carmin which is very close to Magenta, also use Prussian Blue that is close to Cyan.
THANK YOU! I have been trying to understand color for quilting, and have been befuddled by the choices of oil paints my painting teacher had us use. She had us work with two warms, cadmium red and yellow; with black and titanium white; and with four cools, ultramarine blue, lemon yellow, veridian green, and alizarin crimson. From those eight paints, we'd mix all our colors. Your video explains that the crimson is a magenta, and I figure the green must have contained cyan. So BINGO, you just explained a mystery from my childhood!
Interesting idea. But it's still not even that cut and dry. Color theory yields a deeper rabbit hole to get into vs. what most classes on the subject start to cover.
Subtractive colors can get shifted around even a little more, as there are still some more factors to consider. Translucent vs. opaque colors behave differently when layered or mixed. (Which is why what you're explaining in this video is more common in printing processes with translucent colors vs. painting and you'll keep getting those same old arguments. Also why tempura, water colors, acrylics, and oils behave differently, and not just from a material perspective.) Some pigments are mixed with black or white to shift the shade instead of their complimentary colors. Different paints shift intensity differently when they dry. (Lighter/darker or more/less saturated.) And then you have phosphorescence or fluorescence in some cases, where a pigment absorbs light but re-emits it on a slightly different wavelength. What it absorbs may make it stronger/brighter in another color. The nature of the bonding medium used with a pigment may even affect refraction, with iridescence in extreme cases. (Can give the appearance of an oily sheen, or those effects of mica or plastic purposely added.) And not to mention that environmental lighting is likely to drive the palette, as light is the source of the color we perceive. (Painting something while indoors under tungsten light vs. outdoors in sun can yield different results, and one wont necessarily look good in a different lighting situation vs. the other.)
Because the way those things factor in with paints, RGB on the computer screen is often easier to predict than some of the things that can happen with paints. And that's with variation in gamma, color adjustments, and color bit depth that affect gamut.
To sum it up, color wheels are merely a guideline. The way to really know is with experience in working with your particular medium.
pauljs75 Finally a good comment!
wow
RBG works on a computer screen because it's an additive display. You start with black and add more power to either the red, green or blue dots in a pixel. With painting, it is by nature subtractive, since you can only remove natural light. A canvas doesn't supply its own light, so the subtractive color wheel works better.
I want to screen shot this, but it's too long!😢
Wizard of Arts why not screenshotting it a couple of times till you get the full comment?
I notice lots of people are confused!!! Good job Scott, everything is correct. Primaries are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Black is for Shading, White is for Tinting and the mix of BW (different grades of Gray) is to get color Tone. Obviously you can obtain Gray even without using Black, by adding a color's opposite on the color wheel, and that makes sense if you think that mixing 100% of all the primaries will give you Black. Blue and Red aren't primaries, if you use them as primaries you'll get dark and dull colors. Hope you video awakens the most!
iLoveGuitar Are you just as confused today as you were 3 years ago? CYM are not the only “primaries” either.
I love how this treated like a big conspiracy.
Very informative. I was a painting major in college, a graphic designer for a living, and most recently, a screenprinter. Needless to say, in the offset print world, the premise behind CMYK is unchallenged. As a screenprinter, though, I see people try to get a good rich pink by mixing a bright red with white, which can't be done. Magenta in white is what works. Cyan and yellow for a bright green. Odd that this concept hasn't been applied to painting before.
Well, I am glad that yellow is still holding it's ground, but I feel its time is short.
Might be the best color theory video I've ever seen, impressive and also entertaining
Thanks for explaning the tertiary right, but you just made me flunk my whole education, and i´m a painter, never the less you gave me a whole new perspective, not even in colours, but in all life, i should have looked inside my printer long time ago, stupid me :D
YOUR AN ABSOLUTE CHAMPION, Best video ever. It was hard to find this authentic info, i was taught years ago but needed to refresh as i attempted a colour wheel...to replace my original done 10 years ago, as i misplaced it, done with daler and rowney gouache...but couldn't understand what i was doing wrong.....im all better now...fantastic... thanks for creating this!
For all the reasons you just explained, I've used the Robert Burridge colour wheel. Now I understand why it works so well... PS. I taught both my kids the proper names of all the colours and the two of them constantly argue with friends and teacher. I love it!
Thanks for mentioning this! I have not heard of the Robert Burridge color wheel. I will definitely be ordering one!🤗
@5:00-actually the color was named after the fruit (Orange was originally called “yellow-red”).
Are you sure he didn’t mean the Purple fruit?
Watched another youtube on this subject and was thoroughly confused. Yours makes it very clear, thank you! Right around 3:07 is when the (yellow) light bulb went off.
fluorescent pink ,fluorescent blue (that is actually cian) and fluorescent yellow , that can be found in acrylic paint , are very near to the ideal primaries in terms of hue and saturation . using them with black and white has given me good results .
ricardo hananias what are The lightfast value's and from which manufacturers?
Goddamn it! This makes so much sense! I always used to wonder why the colour cells in a tv never matched a colour wheel! It also made no sense because the current colour wheel dismisses the colour value of pink! A colour TRUTH is meant to be inclusive not dismissive which explains why the RBY colour wheel is called a colour theory. Very excellent and love your artwork too. I actually always use Magenta to mix my purple and pink. Always trust the gut! Thank you so very very much Scott! Brilliant!
the current color theory refers to pink as a tint or any color plus white
You have to be complimented for this Scott. As soon as I saw my kids struggling to mix paints according the traditional colour wheel theory, I went out and bought 5 large bottles of poster paint at discount prices. I selected the closest I could find to cyan, magenta and yellow, plus white and black. I took a design course and had to make a colour wheel. It didn't work as well with the schools paints as it did with my kids' paints. But, old ways die hard, no matter how easier the new ways are.
Bless you bud! You have seriously come to my rescue. I can't explain how much pain bad colour wheels have caused me in the real world. I'm a designer, and the theory never matched up with what I could see leaving me at a loss when trying to explain colour choices. Like, cyan always looked a more 'complimentary' complimentary to red than green. But, the 'rules' said otherwise!
I teach Color Theory on an Design Course in Goiânia, Brazil and my students make exercizes with yellow, cyan and magenta paints to make the color wheel and it works very well. Your video helps me to confirm what we already ar doing. Good to see that other people work this way, iven than a lot of books dont chage their concepts.
There is no spoon! Loved this. The most clear, concise and helpful information. Wish I'd found you sooner, after my two days of brain ache trying to understand Munsell theory! Thanks, Scott x
Really outstanding video Scott. And presented in an entertaining way.
I just want to clarify what you said towards the end when you said that people might think blue is a primary colour that can't be mixed and then go on to show that blue can be mixed (from cyan and magenta). This is a nice demo. But whether something can or can't be mixed has got nothing to do with whether it is a primary or not. Red, yellow, blue, cyan and magenta can all be produced by mixture if we choose the right things to mix from. It's another one of those fallacies that we are taught at school that the primaries cannot be produced by mixture.
Clearly if we start with a primary system based on red, yellow and blue then we cannot make any of those primaries from mixtures of the other two or from any of their mixtures. But at the same time if we start with a primary system based on cyan, yellow and blue then we cannot make any of those primaries from mixtures of the other two or from any of their mixtures. The choice of primaries is arbitrary. I would argue - and I am sure you would agree - that a good choice of primaries is one that can generate a large range or gamut of colours. It turns out that cyan, magenta and yellow is a much better choice than red, yellow and blue. But whether the primaries are pure or can be mixed is a red hering I think.
For further information on my thinking see
colourware.org/2011/03/19/ryb-primaries/
colourware.org/2009/07/08/what-is-a-colour-primary/
Steve
I see what you mean Steve. However we do need to remember that it's colour theory not colour fact. In reality the c, m and y we have as printers or artists will never be perfect fully saturated primaries limiting the gamut until we use other tubes of paint.
When I state that a primary colour cannot be mixed, I mean by ANY other colours. It's fairly obvious you won't mix any colour with a mixture of the other 2 regardless of what triad you choose.
Fully saturated primary Cyan, Magenta and Yellow CANNOT be mixed with any other 2 pigments. I promote this colour theory for artists as a guide as to how to best understand colour mixing. If you want the best gamut and are only using 3 colours CMY is the best. The choice of primaries is not arbitrary. ask any printer manufacturer who uses 3 colours to choose anything other than CMY and they will not produce any acceptable results.
The key to mixing vivid colour without polluting the mix is understanding where the primaries are in the colour wheel. Many artists think they can mix vivid green by mixing blue and yellow. By understanding the correct primaries, we understand that we must not use anything beyond cyan unless we want a tertiary or 'muted' green.
It's not about limiting artists to the use of only 3 colours, its really about understanding how to mix them. More information on this is shown in my video Colour: Mixing with Primary Paint
Scott Naismith Well if we are limiting ourselves to color “fact” theory we find that the whole problem lays within using TRIADIC “primaries” in the first place and thus you are just chasing another rabbit down another rabbit hole. Factually, subtractive mixing requires every paint to be at “optimal” value/chroma at all tangential points along the wheel thus making ALL of them “primaries” IFF we want the largest color gamut possible from paint. Therefore, CYM are actually NOT the only “primaries” that can not be mixed by ANY other colors. Today of course we know that there are more than 3 “primaries” with hardly anyone actually choosing paints at the “optimal” Spectrum Triad positions and these paints are always close to RYB. You hold up the printing industry as your “primary” example and the fact is that they hold the same factual theory as the rest of us: The BEST Biased RYB (also conveniently labeled CYM) plus the the BEST arbitrarily chosen (that meets our suitable needs) other “non mixable” paints=the largest mixing range possible for us. Hence the printing industry follows the factual working palette that suits their arbitrary needs and is also why they invented Hexa and Hepachrome printers. What paints are “primary” today may not be “primary” tomorrow and history has shown this factually and a better pigment discovered may not be suitable for the printing industry or others.
Yes Theoretical CYM is best for Subtractive EQUALATERAL TRIADS ONLY based on trichromatic vision of LMS Theory but color TRIADS are for grade school Theoretical Practice and it does not matter which paints you choose to show the example as long as they are not “true” mixing opponents. But it would be best if we started them out with bias/value/chroma type theory with the understanding of basic subtractive theory and do it with vivid colors because the kiddos love vivid colors a bit more than others but soon discover that the world becomes actually quite gray along with our mixes. It’s a fact that we always “pollute” our mixes.
What you are really doing here is trying to teach an RGB light mixing system to your fellow subtractive paint mixing artists by replacing the fallible traditional system of RYB with another fallacy of CYM. CYM is the THEORETICAL TRIADIC OPTIMUM of Light/Vision for Subtractive THEORY but you wanted to stick with “factual” subtractive paint mixing. No matter what triadic system we use to “replicate” the gamut of color vision, we soon learn that all fail to completely “replicate” the gamut and the only “true primaries” is that of the Theoretical LMS and those are arbitrary and have imaginary as well as “real” colors and we discover that we ACTUALLY need all tubes of paint to be “primary” IF we want the largest possible gamut.
I know this is redundant but redundancy is key to learning.
@@ScottNaismithArtist but then you have to admit that you can not produce a "true" red and blue from magenta and cyan you are only going to get a shade of the two colors.
@@richiejourney1840 Richie I think you have said what I with my very limited knowledge was inclined to believe, that it is not a static thing it depends what color you want to get. In pure pigment we have many more than RGB or CMY so as artists, if we want a wide spectrum of vibrant greens we may use a certain configuration of natural pigments. If you want violets
you might use another basis. I don't think we need to have one 3 color primary model to rule them all when there are so many natural pigments available that will each combine to produce different segments of the wheel most vibrantly.
Am I way off? Is the basis of the argument not that one 3 color model can more fully cover the spectrum? Why do we need one model over the other? I understand wanting to be able to mix as much as possible from as few pigments as possible, it seems that it depends on what color you are trying to achieve. Interested to hear more from you as I may have misinterpreted
really interesting. I am a technician and a bit of a amateur physicist. and was looking for a video to help me solve a dispute between others about primaries. Most get stuck on - but blue and yellow make green- and cant see. this will help. I love your work. thanks
The red-yellow-blue ,3 primary model has never really worked that well for creating a complete colour gamut. The cyan-yellow-magenta model is a bit better but it produces pretty crappy oranges / violets...3 colours will never do it because some colours are just not mixable. Try and mix a full strength orange from 2 cadmiums...you can't_it will never be as saturated as that straight out of a tube. If you can't mix a colour , then it must be a primary!!
Therefore cad orange_diox violet_phthalo green( YS) should be primaries. Also , try mixing a brilliant transparent orange from two cads_it won't happen. So, it seems we need another '' primary orange '' ie transparent pyrrole orange (PO71) for glazes.
What every painter wants,is to mix clear, clean colours without too much hassle. You can always make mud any time you like. There is something called ''substance uncertainty'' with pigments which means you can't really predict with accuracy what a colour mix will be. This is due to chemistry and subtractive process.
With all the brands using same names but different formulations and fillers, loadings, and pigment qualities, it is a bit of a mine field to find your way through. From handprint.com there are many models that predict colours and none of them come anywhere near replicating Nature. So, you wanna learn colour mixing, forget theory and get your hands dirty. Test the paints you use __grey them out, white 'em out, black 'em out and mix every single colour with all your others. Try limited palettes first ,see what you can do with a few colours then add to your palette to cover holes in the gamut . Or don't. There are no wrong colours_just the ones you don't want !!. The closer two colours are on the wheel , the cleaner the mix...180 degrees away is grey.Thus,if you had a relatively even spacing of colours around the wheel, you will have a pretty good chance of mixing just about anything you want. Forget all about primaries and secondaries, just look at the fucking colour and learn to navigate to any other colour from where you are with the minimum amount of mixing.Takes time but it works.
Alba Whiteman I wouldn't totally forget the theory but I love your approach.
agree..want you're desired color's get your hands dirty and began mixing...
Well, the violet it makes is far better than the RYB violet, that’s for sure.
Never mind the fancy labels. Simply mix colour to your own satisfaction and call it macaroni.
Its like RGB is the light side and CMY the Dark side.
Even when you mix them one gives white and the other black! :-O
@John Hooper but projectors can't project black, so their background uses white pigments but acts like black. That's why projectors are best viewed in darkness - then the white screen is black as it should be, but without absorbing the projection like a black screen would.
I figured this out one day after reading a book from the 50's on how the eye works. I was so confused by my findings. This video is just what I needed to confirm my understanding. Thank you. Now back to relearning to mix colors.
Thank you! I learned about the difference in colour theory a little while ago and as you said, immediately recognized the printer colours. I’m starting makeup and we were just taught “RBY” and it’s killing me, because we don’t do people’s faces with light, we use pigments. Not paint, but pigmentation. I’ve gone so far as to buy artist markers and sketch paper to do my own colour theory diagrams (half to do notes, half to prove my point). I have to do the grade school RBY for my exam, but wondering if it’s actually the best for colour matching. I’ve seen argument that it is, even though it’s not a true pigment colour wheel - as the “primaries” are secondary in pigment. Part of me is wondering if this is simply indoctrination “what we were taught might be wrong but is still best” or true.... I also noticed green and pink are opposites and girls have a penchant for matching these two colours together.
I am in utter shock. I never thought such massive difference could exist, and never realized it before. Gracias enornmes por el video!
I saw some of your paintings they are daring and exciting. They look like flower gardens in the sky! Eat your heart out Van gogh. They are very good and very original.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! This is THE MOST VALUABLE art tutorial I have ever seen and arguably the most valuable ever presented. I knew the traditional color wheel is wrong. I am not experienced enough to figure out the correct one. You are very generous to share this knowledge.
Love this. I teach graphic design and my students are going to enjoy hearing the news about the color wheels we have been making are WRONG! :-) It's always right there in front of us and most of us can't see it because we have been trained to color inside the lines.
WELL DONE! Toppling such a huge misconception that exists even in the art world.
There's a lot of hacks teaching art on RUclips. It's nice to see someone who actually knows what he's talking about.
thanks ...opens up a whole new world!
Good video, thanks. The main thing I'd like to add is that there are no lights that can stimulate our colour receptors directly, even blue light stimulates the red and green receptors in our eyes to some degree. So the choice for colour primaries for light is somewhat arbitrary, and has been standardised for our computer monitors and printers by international convention.
Indeed the original suggestion for three primary colours by Young was red, green and violet, if you thought that way then you would have blue as a secondary for visible light and so would be compatible with blue as a primary for paint (though not red).
So there are no primaries that can make all the colours we see, which is why the impressionists were so insistent on using pure colours out of the tube, you get colours that way that you can never get by any mixture of other paints. You could never for instance mix a pure cadmium red from other colours. The best you can get is an approximate set of primaries that makes nearly all the colours apart from the most vivid ones. That is what the RGB and CYM system is - an approximation that can create almost all the colours we need, unless you need a really pure colour "out of the tube".
You might like my article on science20.com where I discuss whether ETs might experience light the same way we experience sound and vice versa. It helps brings out some of the idiosyncracies of how we percieve sound and light. These differences are not intrinsic to light and sound as such, are much more to do with how we perceive them.
www.science20.com/robert_inventor/blog/close_encounters_tune_just_fun_idea_or_music_one_easiest_ways_communicate_ets-125915
I use this theory all the time when I paint. I use pthalo blue (a transparent) and printer's magenta (also a transparent) to get a rich midnight blue, my go-to color in acrylic. But I started out in graphic design, photography, and art concurrently. It made a lot more sense that way. Love this video and I will use it to explain the theory to others.
Terri Light absolutely spot on. While I've been within an art school education, I've taken as much influence from graphics and have lectured in graphics. But even within that world, there has been an acceptance that RYBhas a place in pigment theory. Totally false.
Within graphic design teaching, I had to go against conventional syllabus when teaching colour
Terri Light meant to add that in practise, the modern, digital realm of graphic design teaching is far more anchored in reality
Hi Scott i put this colour theory in to practise using oil pastels my painting i did using these colours sold at an exhibition before it even started!! Colours mixes were vibrant i had a few comment saying i had used the wrong blue but the paintings sold i used white and three colours closest to magenta, cyan and yellow. All the doubters should try it out and see what happens thanks Scott
I studied color for 10 years and your right about all of it. And your right just because it's true doesn't mean you have to paint with them that way. Some people here said somethings about names of color in different languages. In printing they use what is called DIC numbers not names to mix the right colors. The CYMK is secondary to RGB in that it can back mix to the primaries or go forward to the tertiary colors in subtractive mixing. The only difference is in RGB in light the colors get lighter when mixed and in pigment the colors get darker--same wheel. Now with tube paint you have to know where that color is on the RGB color wheel and how pure or how bias that color is. All international color standards are set by something called CIE light waves--it looks more like a horse shoe.
That was a great video. It was incredibly informative and helpful. You really helped explain things in ways that were easy to understand, visually and orally. We are learning about this in psychology and I didn't understand the difference as well as I wanted to, but this was a huge help!
I've always thought its almost conspiracy level how cyan is never mentioned when talking about colors or the typical rainbow spectrum... even though you can clearly see a distinct "light" band for yellow and cyan, on each side of green. The classic "ROY G BIV" is listed, even though cyan is always there but lumped in as "skyblue or lightblue".... while most would think of blue as the darker navyblue or even "indigo" color. Magenta is also the other color almost never mentioned but very important for color schemes. Cyan has an important role in various religions or cultures as well for being the color of the sky or a tropical water, compared to the darker blue/indigo color of space/night sky. I really like cyan, and its variants like aquamarine or turquoise, they are such a vibrant shade of blue/green.
I have often wondered if our "RYB" color cones in the eye are actually magenta, yellow, and cyan... with the rods being a black/white... giving us the same CMYK (cyan magenta yellow black) color scheme that some ink printers use. It would make sense to distinguish the more light/pure color tones which can look like RGB when stacked and layered as opposed to RGB... but who knows, colors and light vs paint are two different worlds.
Thanks very much for this. I've been struggling with my understanding of magenta. I did a painting of a camellia a couple of years ago which was bright, luminous magenta and discovered I couldn't mix it from any of my reds and blues, including alizarin crimson, rose madder, rowney rose. In the end I went and bought some other tubes and it wasn't until I bought permanent magenta that I could finally get something close to the colour. It has puzzled me ever since because I was taught the big lie at school that everything could be mixed from red, blue and yellow. Thanks again. :)
Thank you very much. I am teaching junior high art and have one group that is unusually gifted. I have not done color theory with them yet (they have been patiently and with surprising enthusiasm drawing with graphite thus far!). I would like them to know modern color theory as well as traditional because it is so very helpful to understand both. Traditional color theory gets a bad rap in some circles but it is understandable historically speaking why red, yellow, and blue were considered primary colors because of the pigments available to artists. And yet, we ought to be honest with students and give them both sides of the story. Peace, Arnold
Solipsism practice? The beginning of the video was good, but at end...
RGB are primaries for all light based systems. You can't get a CMYK projector or monitor/smartphone. Any lighting technician or photographer knows that.
If You want a holywar: light is primary, no light - no reflection/scattring.
This is for paint in which you can get cyan, magenta and yellow paints. Some manufacturers do label these colours e.g. Daler Rowney's System 3 acrylics offers Process Cyan, Process Magenta, and Process Yellow, which allow students interesting experiments with mixing these true primaries with a bog standard introductory set of acrylics. I'm using the System 3 10 tube Introductory set + Process Cyan and Process Magenta. I'm afraid creating a series of colour reference cards to see what is produced. My conclusions so far are that one should use the colours that suit your subject. The true primaries of the colours are potent and work best for art that isn't based on nature as there are rarely pure colours in nature. One can do landscapes for example, with the traditional "earth" pigments, but adding the true primaries can add something to your arsenal if used appropriately.
Despite your cinematic narcotic allusion, I was intrigued with your content. Fantastic job! Thank you! and....CHEERS!
Scott, I have a background of being an RAF Photographer and later teaching Physics but now an old duffer took up WC and OIls aabout 3 years ago. I have found especially dealing with paint companies support staff tring to use my Physics and Photography knowledge to tie in with my painting a total disaster, even tried to use the Stephen Quiller wheel but found no true logical techniques to create as close as you can colours required. Your background of your degree and time spent in printing certainly gives me further credibilty in your very good analogy of the red and blue Matrix pills. Have watched a few times and as others have said here it goes against much what we accept as the norm, so I will certainly watch a few more times and see if it helps. Also want to say, have found it very hard to finalize what I want to paint and have to say your fantastic use of colours for landscape certainly inspires me to do some thing similar, I kinda tend to like painting landscapes but have to say many of the loose styles of well known and good tutors on here (you know the ones) always ender up with plain and drab looking paintings. Much of their work is the abilty to correct and go over many times after leaving to dry, I really like your emotive (which I am ) and one strokes with a brush or palette knife with out muddying the colours BUT (LOL) I find is bloody hard to do, now I knw far more about the true skill of brush work and the palette knife in not producing a mess buta work of art - you really have my admiration. Unfortunatelt at 67 I don't have the years left to reach such mastery of paint, colour and emotion you have but I am going to give it a go.
Yes I'm aware about orange and also aware that languages do not cover all colours, mostly because colour is an analogous concept and language is not. There's a tribe in africa that has several words between cyan and blue meaning they can much easier visually differentiate these hues.
Not sure where my mistake is.
The most important colours to label with words from a young age are RGB and CMY every other word (like orange) will also increase our visual perception and differentiation.
P.S. If your wondering what the K is in CYMK it stands for black. Black is necessary in order to get some areas dark enough because the colors won't mix down in subtraction enough. The yellow is too light it's the next step to white. They get the black by using yellow to filter the picture that separates the dark blue and then they replace the the color blue with black ink or paint. It take a long time before you can look at any color or tube of paint and know how bias it is or where it belongs on the accurate RGB wheel.Sometimes this knowledge is called color spacing.Some tube colors are higher intensity or darker than CYMK can produce. The across the board system has limits for good reasons but it is all true what he said the true color wheel. Artist have been learning to paint by ear for thousands or years. Note: Da vinci considered green a primary color.
Thanks for that Smokinbonez. Small note that the K actually stands for 'Key', which is, of course, black. Common misconception.
The reason why CMY inks used in printers don't give a true black is the inaccuracy and imprecision of their colors, cyan doesn't look like cyan, it's just a blue with a little bit if white without a hint of green, cyan is used to have a hint of green, magenta doesn't look like magenta, it looks like it's red already, magenta used to be more purplish than that. Also, the reason is they don't mix but layer each color on top which makes the last color to be layered on top will slightly dominate. Try to compare these two images:
* upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/CMYK_subtractive_color_mixing.svg/1024px-CMYK_subtractive_color_mixing.svg.png - this one's used in printers
* upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/CMY_ideal_version.svg/1024px-CMY_ideal_version.svg.png - this one is the real CMY, the exact opposite of RGB (note that it creates true black color when mixed)
OMG THANK YOU.. The standard color wheel has never made sense to me.. THIS one does...
Substitute the secondaries and primaries with CMY and RGB and everything else in the 1st video is valid. Good point about desaturating yellow. This is all about perception. Many perceive what is actually blue/cyan for blue. Blue is actually very close to 'indigo' or purple. In my other video, I've actually used blue to desaturate yellow. However if it's lemon yellow (nearer green) you'd choose purple. People will argue they've made green with blue/yellow but their blue is actually dark cyan.
Honestly, I was told I’m color blind from when I was in high school and as an adult now who’s an artist and learning to use color theory in makeup. Because I like wearing makeup. I strongly believed that cyan, yellow and magenta must be the original colors unlike the primary colors. I feel confident in my painting and makeup skills to use the cmyk color wheel/chart for makeup, art, and fashion.
I am a fibre artist and am fascinated by your colour wheel. I wonder how my instructors would feel if I showed up at class with cyan, magenta and yellow. I know that in my next colour dying I will be using your wheel.
Thanks Scott. Nice to hear the accent from back home.
Mind. Blown. Must watch this again with my paints out -- self-taught artist struggling to keep up. :D
I am glad that this knowledge goes public at last. I was fighting many people over this for years :D
Thank you for posting!! Finally an end to my suffering in mixing colors.
Thanks for this eye opener, I understand the use of dark background and light background more now.
My bachelor of fine Arts degree was a RIPOFF! Okay no wait I graduated from college in the early 80s. I always had a had trouble making purples. I made my own fluid paints back then by hand. But I could never make a good purple or green. The green I had more luck with cuz I like to Spring Green and I would start with yellow. And I guess that I had more success with that because it's a true primary. But I always loved the colors that I got mixing store-bought purples and magenta's with the yellow. Now I know why thank you so much. I still don't understand why they did that? And what did the Old Masters do? Gosh this brings up a whole new world of questions.
but there comes a time when it has to be clear what words pertain to which colors so we can progress in our discussion of colors. Thanks @scottnaismith for this awesome video!
I thought the theory was very interesting and, quite honestly, it does make sense. It's a very 21st Century view of color theory. As an artist (and an art teacher), however, I disagree that the traditional color wheel is inadequate and that it should be discarded. Throughout art history, the color wheel has been visualized in different forms so there are many theories about how color should be properly organized. I don't see why there should just be one and, most definitely, I don't see how this theory being promoted is the answer to everything. After all, the traditional color wheel, as we know it, has been responsible for a tremendous amount of beautiful art. If you're having a difficult time mixing the color you want then, by all means, try this CMYK color wheel out.
The colour wheel is a tool which can be used for a better understanding of what should happen when colour mixing. The CMY wheel is the more accurate one to use for this. Most accomplished painters of the past (and present) have combined colours well by instinct, eye and experience despite the non existence of the true colour wheel. There was no wheel reference at all for Da Vinci, but he was still able to produce great works of art. Modern technology and science has proven the failings of RYB, traditionalists remain in denial. If you are going to use a colour wheel, it might as well be the right one. Another point about the traditional wheel is that most people see cyan and label it as blue so they get better mixing results. Much of our problem is in language. We still refer to 'redheads' because orange is a relatively new word!
***** You are right.. the problem is in language. The problem is people get caught up in the language though not that they get confused by it. Who cares about numbers. This is color not math. We are people not machines. You should not let a machine measure your color when in the end it is eyes that will judge. We are artists not scientists. Our work should be measured with our eyes for the viewer will judge with theirs. Who the hell is going to go look at a piece of art and take out their science and machines to make sure your colors are scientifically accurate? And accurate to what? Who's to say what any one color in any given piece should be anyway?
D Ha. D, I think you are right in many ways. Math does not exist in Nature. It's a man-made idea to help us understand the world around us. Kind of like the stars in the sky. We made up constellations to make order of them -- and constellations vary by culture. So, what may look like a Lion for one can be something else for another. Who's to say which one is right? Like Blue or Cyan?
The color wheel, in all its many forms, is certainly a helpful tool -- particularly in mixing color. To be honest, in my 20 years of making art I never really used one. I always just go with the flow and use my intuition, as Scott mentioned to his reply above. I have made many mistakes in trying to get the colors I want, but I think that can be an enjoyable part of making paintings. Plus it can lead to really weird colors that you can't even name or replicate.
Potemkin I like the last of what you said.. well particularly that part. Making weird colors and such. It's always better to be a little off. Otherwise it looks like a machine did it, no? I would also offer an example as to my point before - My mom has a bathroom. Walls and mirrors and shower and all were perfectly vertical/horizontal as far as she could tell. And as far as I could tell and as far as anyone else could tell for that matter. The she had it remodeled and the contractors took out their "technology" and math and made it numerically correct. Now all the walls and mirror and shower are numerically/scientifically correct, right? Except now it looks off to everyone who sees it. Everything is crooked. So I suppose the question is this- Do you want your art to BE "mathematically/scientifically" correct or do you want it to LOOK correct?
As an aside I apologize for coming off assholeish lol. I just realized after reading my previous response.
D Some interesting comments on this thread. The meeting of science and art... I'm sure Leonardo davinci would have liked the debate. However, my intentions with the science side of this video is only to attempt to prove why primaries of painting are CMY. I suppose just like knowing what horizontal and vertical are, helps you decide whether, by instinct, something is 'straight'. Getting good results from instinctive colour use takes years of practise, but you'll get there quicker if you understand the correct theory from the outset. Some people struggle to mix the colour they are striving for and mostly it's down to confusion with RYB. e.g. 'Red and blue make purple, right? so Ill mix my cad red and my manganese blue...' WAY OFF!
Good thing you use CMY also, I have made a video for the same reason but I also proved that red is a secondary and I also mentioned that black is primary. That video is called the truth paint. I hope you watch it because I failed at making it several times.
Dear RUclips, you should recommend this video to the people of the world. Thank you in advance.
my childhood was a lie
Great video. I just added to my article on color on the inventorArtist site. Interestingly before I made the article I searched youtube and google for people pushing this system but there was nothing. Your video didn't come forward for me until today...
Who knew color theory was such a hot topic? If you don't believe Scott here then google a Munsell color wheel. Albert developed his model at the turn of the 20th century and sure enough there is red right across from blue/green and magenta across from bright green and so on. This isn't some goofy idea this crazy Glaswegian just made up, artists and printers have known about this for a hundred years. Still don't believe? Check out the guy's art. I think he knows how to mix color. I took the blue pill long before watching this video.
Sean O'Skea I think most artists know whats actually going on and realize that CYM alone is just as bogus as RYB alone.
I like the explanation very much. I will have to apply the concept to actually understand it fully. Also mixing and color matching and values matching are to life will be a new challenge.
Check out this book and there is a very nice tinted engraving plate inside the front cover. I think the answer to why the colour wheel as taught by art teachers today is wrong might be apparent.
Chromatography; Or, A Treatise on Colours and Pigments, And of Their Powers in Painting by George Field published in 1841
As a physicist and have always wondered why 'art' classes get this wrong and teach Red/Yellow/Blue instead of Cyan/Yellow/Magenta even through printing companies have had it right since the invention of the coloured printing press.
It might be because the definitions of Red and blue have changed over the years.
This could also be linked to the lack of modern vocabulary regarding these newly evolved colours.
What used to be called red and blue - we would now call magenta and cyan... but the art textbooks and teachers have not yet caught up maybe??
So glad that someone has got it right and explained it to the world :)
U give color to my life for telling me the truth.I salute u man
Thank you! I've been trying to learn color, and you just made it logical...but a bit awkward as now I have to reshuffle everything the I've been told!
Amazing video I have always struggled with the color wheel and this makes so much sense! Thank you so so much!
YES! watched this and did exactly what you said. Three colors only CMY. I wish I could share the painting...all in one session...this is the answer I was looking for....you are my favorite teacher....gretchen, palm beach gardens, fl us
Use the additive (light) color wheel to plan your color scheme because that's how we see. Use the subtractive (pigment) wheel to mix your paints, because that's how pigments interact with each other.
I see your last comment here was 5 years ago. Anyway, as a 3 mo beginner, you answered a here to fore unanswered question. Why do all the sites on paint use RGB and not RYB. If nothing else you give me a clearer understanding of colors. Important to me because I am determined to (learn) to mix my own colors. By using your chart, I can now mix with a better visualization. Thank you.
@Nano Taboada, Yeah, you might find you need transparency of cyan as the other 2 are transparent. Try pthalo blue in addition for glazing or darker hues. Think your right about permanent rose actually being a better bet than magenta in that range, although the addition of magenta may give more options for your darks the same as pthalo does.
I do a lt of dyeing and work with primary colours to mix my own secondaries etc. I use cyan, yellow and Magenta. Another thing i do, if I use common brands of dyes, is deliberately split them, with surprising results, which backs up all Scott's claims in this video. Red and blue do not make purple but have given me golds, tea,l and moss greens, because of the way the dyes have been mixed. The only thing I can add is to check whether you are dealing with a single pigment or a blend, because that really can have weird and wonderful results which are fine in dyeing, but not on a masterpiece on a canvas.
Just to elaborate - the fact that CYMK, Cyan Yellow Magenta Black, is used by professional quality printers does show that cyan, yellow, and magenta work well as primary subtractive colours to produce all other colours. It has stood the test of time.
Excellent info on the true colour wheel. My only complaint is that when suggesting actual tube paints to use for magenta and cyan, there was no mention of an appropriate yellow to use with them. I use lemon yellow and cadmium yellow in my 6 colour palette for the RGB system, which have blue and red biases respectively so I presume neither of these would be appropriate.
... I literally just got back from the shop, having bought cadmium red and french ultramarine... *facepalm*
tfw you realize that the complimentary color of cyan is red, magenta is green and yellow is blue............
add that to the fact the previous video revealed: desaturation is adding a complimented color to a pure color.............
tldr; primary colors are desaturated with secondary colors and vice versa o.O
Beautiful video, you are the only one I've seen that views the colours as they are! It's a brilliant source to my communication design master project! :)
Bravo! Finally I found what I’ve wanted to understand. Proper job!
Great video. Just great. And yes, magenta and cyan are indeed primary colours.
The part you said about color and vocabulary. I read an article stating that Russians are better at distinguishing different shades of blue than English speakers because they have more words for them.
Also an interesting read on color mixing is "Yellow and Blue Don't Make Green".
Awesome Video. Thanks for bringing us down the rabbit hole.
When we made colour separation negatives we used a blue filter to make the yellow printer, a green filter to make the magenta printer, and a red filter to make the cyan printer. An accurate colour wheel should have these pairs opposite each other as these are true complementary pairs. In the real world there are no perfectly pure primary colours so things don't work out exactly as the theory suggests, but using CMY is going to get you closer than any other system when mixing pigments or dyes.
Very cool. Color is a tricky matter
This makes so much sense. Still have to get my head around it😎👌
As a colorblind, it's bs to me orange takes three spaces while blue-green and red-violet are literally one slice each. Maybe normal vision sees more orange shades but there's definetly also tradition.
This color wheel should be named:
Red, orange, Yellow, chartreuse, Green, teal, Cyan, azure, Blue, violet, Magenta, pink
Extremely helpful for mixing paints. Thank you. I shared.
You would have really nailed it if you had shown the mixing of a "secondary" red, along with the "secondary" blue demonstration. I'm not sure if you applied some filters to your video or if the camera was adjusting it's white balance, but the "magenta" you showed at the end looked like a deep red.
My eyes are finally opened!
This is just mind blowing, but at the same time it makes so much sense! "There is no spoon."
RGB has a better gamut and using CMYK mode in photoshop will imitate the reduced gamut of printing. The artist using many tubes of paint with different properties gives the painter less of these limitations giving an opportunity for a maximized gamut. Despite what some assume, I do not 'promote' the use of only 3 tubes although my reduced plein air pallete is sometimes reduced to light and dark CMY.
When our curriculum stipulated we do handprints with red , yellow and blue I demonstrated (with sky blue) what it actually does with red and BTW its actually difficult to get orange with mixing handprints as well because yellow is quite impotent. So I said for those reasons we're going to use "pink". It wasn't magenta because it couldn't make a true red but it sure made a vibrant purple. BTW I'm glad you don't pronounce white as wite like most people. Save the "wh".
Vermeer? I'm not sure how he comes into it. He had a penchant for blue vs yellow (see his most famous work 'Girl with The Pearl Earring'). This is consistent with complementaries of the cmy wheel. You might mean Van Eyck though who used Green/ red combinations. In any case colour theory and the colour wheel were not in existence back then so they all used instinct. I believe vermeers instincts to be better than that of Van Eyck.
Love this! Thank you so much. It helps so much shifting colors in digital media in a CMYK workspace. Made my day Scott :)
I think it depends on your color setup. If you use photoshop, you can change the setup from RGB to CMYK. This is primarily for use when printing, as photoshop will only offer you a pallet that will print using those colors. But, as Scott said, when working on a computer screen, you're mixing light, not pigment. However, if you switch to CMY coloring in photoshop, you will get the colors to behave closer to this.
Ultramarine blue is still waaaay brighter blue than what you mixed up, so.... yeah I'd say it's primary. You just can't mix colors to get something that bright and vivid. Your science is correct of course, but your demonstration and results are preposterous. I strongly advise painters to use an RYB primary mixing system and leave CMYK for printers (which as you know still fail to produce the full color spectrum from the component colors CMYK.)
BOBimus Rex I think it depends if you are painting with light or pigment. Or if you are painting on a white or dark ground so you will know how to make your colors pop