I really wish I was told you actually needed magenta. Would have saved years of wondering why I couldn’t ever get the colors I wanted. It never made sense until it was compared to a printer. You are awesome btw! Love your content you do such a great job and it’s great that you teach actual color theory. Thanks for sharing the difficult truth 😊
Just buy a tube of alizarin and use more linseed oil instead of white paint to thin your deep purples. Use an eyedropper to squirt the linseed oil onto your paint drop by drop
Green and red make magenta. Its so weird. I had to make my own magenta for a painting my mom and i were doing and we didnt have any. It took us forever to get the colour right. Paint is so much fun. Colour theory fries my brain sometimes 😂😂😂😂
@@Alex-gd3fk "just buy a tube of alizarin and use more linseed oil" is making a LOT of assumptions about the specific medium any given person may be using 😆 (all in good fun, but for real, oil paint is not the only medium one way be mixing with the intent to create a colour)
the concept of "primary colors" has existed in some format for over 2000 years, and for the majority of that time, red was almost always chosen as one of those primary colors. HOWEVER it should definitely be noted that the word "magenta" was not invented until the 1850s, when magenta paint was invented. it's similar to the shift of the word purple. purple originally could have been used for anything from colors that we now might call magenta to nearly blue. this is in part due to the dye tyrian purple, called porphura in greek, which the word purple is derived from. tyrian purple dye could give that same wide range of colors. or, as another example, look at classical greek. there is no word in classical greek that means "blue" as we would see it today. additionally, ancient greeks often thought of color not just as hues but in terms of brightness. this resulted in the greeks calling the sky "bronze" because it was bright and shiny like bronze plating and homer famously describing the ocean as being "wine dark." the words we use for colors and the way we think of color is always shifting and we should not be afraid of these changes!!
There have actually been studies on this: cultures generally obtain words for light and dark, followed by red, with the rest of the color spectrum getting divided by further gradients step by step until blue is almost universally invented last. Japan actually considered blue a shade of green until well into the 1900s.
Slight correction: The sky being "bronze" isn't because it's shiny like plate bronze, but because of the colour of bronze when it oxidises. See the Statue of Liberty as an example! But yes, the rest is true, that's just one mixup because we're more used to seeing metals as metals in their polished state 😊
Surprisingly enough, in my years at university, you have no idea how many painting teachers forced me to paint with RBY and then got upset I couldn't mix the colours they wanted. I learnt on my own to mix them with CMY at home and that's how i've managed to pass those classes. It's like they either wanted people to fail or just never painted in their lives...
I'm sure their art teachers didn't know any better as it SEEMS to make sense. However, the colors in LIGHT are red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. I'm not sure about the indigo though. 🤔
I had a similar experience. Everyone always loved the color of my paintings but when assigned color wheels I failed. Now I teach elementary art and teach cyan yellow magenta.
@@FireflyGirl68 The Indigo dilemma is actually just a result of English evolution What Isaac Newton called Blue is now called Cyan and what we now call Blue was called Indigo (hence Indigo jeans) so ROY G BIV should now be ROY G. CyBuVo.
@@FireflyGirl68 primary light colors are RGB, simply because that's what our retina's cones are sensitive to. You can't make a cone in your retina more happy/excited than by giving it exactly the wavelength it is specialized in, so those can't be mixed better than their pure forms for our perception.
Thank you so much for making this video. I was in college art class before I learned that magenta and cyan were the true primaries of pigment, and red and blue (and green) were the primaries of light. It's not just kindergarten that lied, but all of high school even! I spent a few years working at a Montessori school teaching art and I was always sure to tell all my students the truth about colors 💗🩵💛🖤💔💚💙
Genuinely helped my art a lot when I realized I could just use CMYK for colors LOL Also, since I find that having an explanation for the science behind this: pigments are subtractive, not additive. Our eyes perceive color through the three wavelengths of light our eyes can recognize, those being red, blue, and green, AKA the primary colors of light. So when we see something magenta, that actually means we're seeing it as a mix of blue and red light. Magenta pigment gives us this effect because it absorbs all the green light, scattering just the blue and red back for us to see. To think of it in terms of computer colors with RBG, it subtracts the G from the mixture and just reflects the RB back. That's also why you can mix it with yellow to make red: yellow does to blue light what magenta does to green, so now you're taking both the blue and the green out of the equation, and leaving only the red behind. This also, interestingly, means that primary colors of light are secondary colors of pigment and vice versa, and why mixing all the pigments together gets you black, while mixing all the lights together gets you white.
Elementary art teacher who teaches magenta , yellow, cyan, here. I started binging your videos a few days ago and got so excited to see you are a magenta fan! I teach my kids people didn’t always have magenta but now we do and it’s very useful. You can make red from magenta and also a non muddy purple. My kids love learning something most adults don’t know.
As a Kinder-1st grade teacher without an art teacher at our school, I confess I've taught RYB as primaries and CMY as primaries of light. ex if you mix CBY as light (or cellophane + light source) you get closer to rainbow-like O,G & P/Violet. It doesn't work though with tempera paint.
yes, and the 2 sets work together. RGB are primaries in light, and when u mix them you get the secondary colours CMY. CMY are the primaries in paint and dye, and when you mix them you get the secondaries RGB. RGB are primaries in additive light, when you are adding light to a surface to achieve a colour, and CMY are primaries when its subtractive, when you are putting a substance on a surface that absorbs light to achieve a colour.
@@necaacen - Reading your post, I think I felt a "pop" in my brain. Either I stripped a gear or I created a new high gear. Not sure which it is, lol! 🤯😜
Retired art teacher here. Once watched a student try to mix yellow with other colors. It was really cool. I told him the theory behind primary colors. But, cheerful and optimistic, bradda was convinced he could do it! So I hung out with him as he worked. Other students became interested. Some students believed he could do it. Others were skeptical. I requested both sides show respect for the other. In the end, the student acknowledged he could not do it. But felt he could with access to a more extensive palette. It sparked some great discussions and some keen interest in subtractive color theory. The kind of experience only another teacher can fully appreciate.The kind of experience that makes a teacher grateful for the profession they chose.
@@yokusfrequently9362 No. It was about trying to make yellow from other colors. Yellow is a primary color. Other colors come from it (and red and blue). Not the other way around.
I'm personally more of a fan of split primaries, acknowledging like 2 sets of primaries, the traditional primaries and the CMYK ones. There's a lot to the traditional ones, but if you want proper, clean mixes, the CMYK ones are the way to go. That's also mind of what we were taught in school and pretty close to what those opaque water color (Deckfarbeb are kinda integral to school art classes here in Germany) are set up like. I still set up my water colour sets and other materials like those ❤
I also like the split primaries thing. I like it because you get different complimentary colors depending on what set your using. red is opposite green in one and cyan in the other.
But “true primaries” don’t really exist or can’t exist to be exact. What we have access to are relative primaries, colors that we mix to obtain a decent color space within the visual spectrum. The more primaries you use the larger the color spectrum will be. Most professional artists use 6, 8, or 10 individual colors.
There is actually at least 4 types of primary colors Traditional: RYB on W Additive: RGB on Bl (in screens) Subtractive: CMY on W (in modern coloring Contrary: RGYB (Biologically how our eyes work) Edit: these are only the ones I know. There probably are many more I don't know about.
I recently started deep diving into colour, and the algo chucked your shorts videos at me. At first I was resistant based on the generally negative algo experience, but wadayknow I was finally being shown something that is not only entertaining but also super useful. You've got good character and acting chops. Love the art too.
Yeah since pthalo blue is the closest pigment towards cyan and been used as a cyan alternative. The same thing goes to quinacridone magenta that could be categorized as rose since it's lean more towards red. There's other pigment that actually really close towards cyan/magenta. The problem is they're toxic and have bigger pigment particles than the rest of the pigments which makes them bad at mixing
THANK YOU FOR CLEARING THIS UP!!! i HATE making purple with red and blue because it always comes out too blue or too red!!! also, i've made my favorite color, Windows Teal, MULTIPLE times with blue, yellow, and white! and i've even done it with green, blue, and white!!
I found out about the color theory and how red wasn’t a part of the primary colors when I was younger. It solved all my questions about how would use a pure red and a pure yellow paint and it wouldn’t make a pure orange and then I tried using pink and it worked perfectly. Or something around a pink. I also always got annoyed that when I would mix red and blue paint together, it would kind of just make like this muddy brown color and wouldn’t look like a purple.
Pigments are a little more complicated than that, because the absorption spectrum of a pigment is usually not “even” and if two colors are mixed the absorption spectrum’s add to each other. Similarly, “primary colors” can be any and all colors in a limited palette. There are no true primaries, and all that primaries do is allow you to access a certain color space within the color spectrum, therefore the more colors you have the more of the color spectrum you can use, and the more vibrant the colors you will obtain. Professional artists use 6-12 individual paints.
I think we should just use 6 different primary colors. It's difficult to mix really vibrant shades of green with yellow and any kind of blue. Our eyes, when a person isn't colorblind, are highly attuned to different shades of green, so it really should be represented among the primary colors. And to have the 6 most visible parts of the color spectrum represented makes sense. All the colors red, blue, cyan and magenta fits into that.
This is a throwback to the time I got into acrylic painting. I was so pissed I couldn't get the pinks and purples I needed with red. I was just looking at my red, blue and white and thought "there is no way I am going to get the color I need with these colors". Magenta comes along and opens up a whole new palette of colors and shades. It was like a revalation. Thing is megenta usually isn't included in variaty packs and I just don't know why. it is such an important color and you need it but I always have to get it seperatly.
When I was in art school, I was fascinated with that shade where blue and violet meet. It was so rewarding when people would look at my work and disagree as to whether a color was blue or, as they put it, purple.
@@Lunch2391 I guess your lack of reading comprehension overlooked the words, "...or, as they put it.,," You missed that part, huh? But not the part where you misspelled violet. I may be old but, unlike you, I can read and spell beyond a 6th grade capacity.
@@reddiver7293 okay. you have issues if you need to point out a small spelling mistake (by a non native english speaker.) I don't care if you call it violet or purple. My art teacher did care and you do to. if that offends you I don't know how I can help you.
@@Lunch2391 You call them issues. In America, we call them mistakes. And, in addition to grammatical errors, you are clearly unable to comprehend rather obvious nuances. Which, for someone with English as a second language, is understandable. But not when you correct mistakes that are, in fact, the result of your inability to fully understand written English. Are you really such a fool to think someone with an MFA does not know basic subtractive color theory?
People need to seriously forget about RYB. It’s an old model that only makes muddy vague colors, unless that’s the goal. CMY is the true primary paints. It’s good this is becoming more common knowledge.
When I first learned this like just a couple years ago, I decided to make rainbow tapioca pearls with just magenta, yellow, and cyan.. they were the most vibrant things I've ever made in the kitchen and the colors mixed so bright and happy... been in love with those 3 colors ever since
Oh, man! You could have documented that whole project and submitted it as conceptual art in a juried show. I hope you do more of your culinary paintings!
You have solved an ancient, enraging mystery for me. It used to make me SO MAD that I could never mix a purple paint as a kid! Seriously, one of the most frustrating things in my life. Is there anything worse than being five years old, and having a very certain (if unknowingly MUCH simplified) grasp of the facts, only to have those facts betray you???
I work at an interior paint store, my job is to tint paint into whatever colour of choice etc. While yes there are technically 3 different red pigments that we use, if we were to tint a bright red or “primary red” that most people think of… bet you can guess which tints get used!! (The answer is primarily magenta and yellow hehe. Because there is no red tint that would create that shade of red, at least when it comes to paint)
Love this video. Thank you for talking about this, I have felt this way for years! I'm a visually impaired artist and I have one request for your future videos. When you show text on screen, can you please show it a little bit bigger and a tiny bit slower? It was challenging to follow along, even when I paused the video multiple times. Thanks from a new fan! 😀
I got here from one of your shorts on lead white and other poisonous paints, but today I learned something! Thank you for this video, especially since I have a toddler who's going to be starting to learn basic color theory in school soon-ish. I'm excited to see how their school teaches it and I suspect we'll have a good time performing the experiment you did at the end with your two color wheels so that they can see the difference for themselves.
I'm saving this video to post every time this bloody argument comes up on FB. As someone who spent 16yrs working in theatre, understanding colour theory was my bread and butter when doing lighting design.
I work at a gym at the membership desk. We do a trivia question everyday. I put the question "what are the true primary colors?" Answer options were: a) red, green, and blue b) red, yellow, and blue c) black, white, and gray or d) yellow, cyan, and magenta. Our gym really caters to the older population in the morning. I had member ready to fight me over the answer (which was D of course). They were telling I was wrong and asking what made me an expert in the primary colors. Heh, I have a degree in art, I took color theory and film photography courses. I think I know s thing or to, I said. They were even more distressed when I did a trivia explain that dogs see in shades of gray, brown, yellow and blue and not black and white. It's hard to get people to see the truth. Like the only way we can experience purple is by seeing red and blue LIGHT simultaneously. There is no such thing as purple light.
There are no "true" primary colors. If you really took courses in color theory and photography you ought to have known the simple basics on how light and color works and why things appear as a certain color to us.
I somehow got all the way through my MFA in 2007 without being taught this but interestingly a good friend and classmate had read about it on his own & had started experimenting with CMYK in painting. I was eager to see the results but I don't recall ever seeing them before he changed schools. It only occurred to me later that before I started painting with the "required" oil colors I had to have for my undergrad painting classes, I'd already been painting that way with acrylics because I'd been generously bequeathed a box of high quality used acrylics with those colors (among others) in it, couldn't afford my own, and those were the closest to "primary" RBY in the box. I also couldn't afford decent brushes and used to paint with my hands & then add details with a palette knife. It changed my whole painting style going forward.
I don’t know why but I understood that cyan magenta and yellow were the colors you used on printer cartridges and on softwares, but for some reason never connected that to color theory when I painted. This freaking explains why my primary red and primary blue look like a brown purple!! I always get so frustrated that I ended up just buying a bright violet color paint bc I do not trust primary red and primary blue to give me purple 😂😂😂 you just articulated what I’ve been angry about for the last 3 months. Thank you for this video! It was very informative and hilarious to watch
great video, great channel. i don't think i have seen any other that educates people about this kind of technology in such a fun way. definitely gonna share it with fellow artists.
Thank you for making all these clips about colour. I try to convince people for years that red is not a primary. I come from the printing business and there no convincing is nessesary...but so many artist still learn the wrong so called facts about colour. Its allways fun to watch your videos...as a life long learner I learned so much from you over the years... especially about the toxisity of the traditional oil colours. BTW.... like your fury studio assistance! xs
Love getting information. Love your informative videos on poisonous or toxic ' killer colors. I understand about printing primary being different from taught primary. Ive been an artist but never got into artistic painting( as yet), but structural painting is another horse of another color. Reason is it uses both sorts and bases to get named scientifically extracted colors. Automotive and vehicle painting is yet another sort with many pigments being as you refer, or better, the double or multiple color wheel.
Would really like to see you do a similar video discussing the difference between cyan and blue as a paint. When I look up cyan paint it seems like everyone has a different idea of what cyan looks like in paint. I feel like I can mix cyan, unlike magenta with paint. Please help me and explain this madness
Really simple, “primary colors” are any set of colors that you have, that when mixed can’t reproduce any one color you have available to its full saturation. For example, if you have yellow, green and blue, you will be able to mix blue+yellow to obtain a green, but not as vibrant as the green pigment you have. If you are smart about your pigment choices you will be able to reproduce any hue, however less saturated than “the actual color” that’s how you can mix purple and yellow to obtain some form of red.
Huge thanks to you for this Bekah. Have only just discovered your channel and now subscribed! I dabble with paint, and have always believe the red, yellow blue colour theory. I found the whole post interesting, but the last minute was what blew my mind. I have admired the work of some artists for years, wondering how they achieved their beautiful vibrant, unmuddied colours. I had thought it might just be the brand of paints, but after seeing your cyan magenta yellow colour swatch, it became clear me that they use that palette instead of the red yellow blue palette. So, huge kudos to you for making this video. It has answered a question that has really bugged me for years.
For young painters out there; give painting with Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Pthalo Green, and Paynes Gray a go as your base primaries just for funsies. It’ll teach you how versatile colours are
As someone who knows too much about color, such as why light is made up of "RBG" and printing and photography is made of "CYMK", and even why mixing magenta with yellow you can get red; I have realized that the color wheels are all lies. There is no such thing as a primary color. And pigments react to one another, adding and neutralizing aspects of each one that are mixed together. Especially when dealing with natural pigments. Chemistry is a miraculous thing.
As a colorist in the comic book industry I'm screaming at the top of my lungs (internally) FINALLYYYYYY!!!! A video I can just link people to watch so I don't have to waste anymore energy explaining this sh-t. Thank you for putting in the effort to make this. It's easy to understand. I will be using your channel as a resource for people to learn more about paint and color theory. This rules. You rule.
@@420iceninja I hear that. A large part of doing art is learning to accept the way one does art. And a huge part of people starting and then stopping art is the difference between their idea and what they actually produce. Doing art is a process that teaches us to not just accept how we do art, but to value it, as well. Peace.
This is why CMYK is used for printing. As a former newspaper artist I learned how adjust graphics for proper color mixing for offset presses. Why would painting be any different? Cyan and magenta are necessary if one wants to blend desired colors.
Great video . A story about a Robin.. . In England, way back in time. A humble little songbird was named Robin redbreast ( even though it's actually orange). At the time, we didn't have a word for the colour orange, so it was called redbreast. As orange, was seen as red . A truer red , would be the breast of a male bullfinch, yet his name doesn't include the word red , at all . 😊
It makes sense. It's the same thing with printer ink. The primary colors for printer ink are Cyan, MAGENTA, and Yellow, which are used with blacK. And the Magenta and Yellow inks combine to make the red color on paper.
Hi Bekah - in case you need to explain it again, I suggest you refer to the additive and subtractive colour models. The major difference that I want to draw your attention to is that, when people talk about "primary colours" they often think about additive model. Which makes sense when explained e.g. with coloured filters used in an LCD monitor, or on top of a torch, or any other source of light. In additive mode, only a selected part of visible spectrum (to which our colour receptors are attuned, that is blue, green or red) is delivered to eyes, and with such three colour filters we can simply add the parts of spectrum, as they pass through the filters, to balance the intensity of each part, hence creating any perceptible colour. This does not work in subtractive model which is used for everything that reflects light (like paintings - which famously existed long before the invention of computer monitors or television or even coloured glass). In subtractive model, we do not have filters, instead we have pigments, and they play a different role in building perception of colour - they reflect a part of spectrum, while absorbing other parts. That's a big problem if your pigments are e.g. red and blue - because red pigment will absorb both blue and green, while blue pigment will absorb both red and green. When you mix two such pigments, you are just getting something that absorbs green much more than it absorbs red or blue (while also absorbing both), and that's basically "dirty reddish" instead of purple, as you very well demonstrated in the video. This is why primary colours in subtractive colour model (i.e. as used for paintings or anything that does not emit its own light) have to absorb only one colour (of the three to which are colour receptors are attuned) and fully reflect the other two. Which is why, in pigments, we have primary colours: magenta (which only absorbs green), cyan (which only absorbs red) and yellow (which only absorbs blue). It is also worth noting that, had our colour receptors been different, the primary colours in both models would have been different, too ! (and I cut here, because it's getting above my head).
This is why it is color theory and not color facts. Yes, with the spread of full color printing, we have discovered that primary color have shifted and that black is needed to bring the image into focus. We also have so many more options of pigments now than they had 100 years ago. Was a fun video demonstrating just how flawed theory is verse practice.
@seekingthelovethatgodmeans7648 A halftone is done by a screen effect- it is dots that have a variable of density. It can be used over other colors or the paper color. It is not a separate color. So, it still only uses the four colors of ink, it is the density (amount) of the ink coverage that changes.
This totally explains why I could never get certain shades of purple or green, etc. Now i shall buy the correct "primary" colours. Thank you for this 😉
Professional artist here. Magenta is a very magical color, but RBY primaries are the most efficient way of communicating color in my opinion. Getting that perfect purple is great, but the tricky part is going backwards. I like to keep the words "red, blue, and yellow" very vague so I can look at this weird color and deconstruct it in my head until I determine if it's classified as a red, yellow or blue. So with that being said, even though Magenta is it's own color, I personally classify it as a red for max efficiency, which would revert it back to the RYB color system.
its not the most efficient way of communicating colour. CMY are the primary colours in paint and ink, and RGB are the secondary colours. theres nothing efficient about being wrong, youve just got used to being wrong for a long time and dont like change.
Yeah, I forgot about the difference between light color theory and pigment color theory! I tend to have trouble with colors even though I love them so dearly~ But sure enough, I was looking at my watercolors after picking them back up again and my ‘Primary Red’ from Windsor & Newton PR170 is a kind of pinkish magenta tint when I activate it! And the ‘Primary Blue’ literally says ‘(CMYK Cyan)’ directly underneath that. Man I gotta study up on this stuff again, it’s been years since I took a color theory class and I STILL struggle with differentiating value and not just hue in my works. Especially the digital ones;;; Corel Painter 4 I miss you come back to me
I use acrylic paints, and a few years ago I noticed by accident how magenta + orange = red, and it is now my favorite way to make a red color rather than using the ones right out of the tube, if I want a really vibrant red.
Dunno how I found this video but I think some of the confusion comes from the light spectrum. RGB color model is used quite often then. Tbh I forgot all about the primary colors I was taught, I coded HTML as a hobby and used alot of hex colours so RGB became the standard in my mind lol. Then you have CYMK for printing ofc, but that is like you mentioned here pigments and what not.
RGB and CMY work together. In light RGB are the 3 primary colours and that means CMY are the secondary colours because red light + green light = yellow, blue light + red light = magenta etc. in paint and ink etc CMY are the primary colours which means RGB are the secondary colours. magenta + yellow = red, yellow + cyan = green. so RGB and CMY work together as the primary and secondary colours depending on if your light is additive or subtractive they are reversed. we see colours because of the frequencies of light going into our eyes. RGB are the primary colours when its additive light, where you are adding light, and CMY are the primaries when you are subtracting light, eg a white canvas is reflecting the full light spectrum, you paint yellow paint onto it and that paint absorbs (subtracts) all the frequencies of light other than yellow so only the yellow is now bouncing off and entering our eyes.
No. The colors of the rainbow are described as ROY G BIV - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. So the color wheel is typically attributed to those colors when teaching children and whatnot. It is simply "familiar" that way. Then you have old documents with color experimentation that seemed to back the RYB primaries color wheel. Extremely old documents, from Da Vinci or something. There was no mistake there with how the information was taught before. We simply know better now, but somehow the updated information wasn't spread everywhere, which is why there is confusion
To add to this thread - I don't paint with black unless black is the focus of the painting. I make black with RED AND BLUE. Pure red and blue out of the tube, in the right proportions (because red tends to be more saturated, you often don't need much) make black. Or a dark enough grey to pass as black, and one that blends with other colors better than any black tube paint does.
Ha! I do remember my art teacher in primary school told us that true red is in fact rather pinkish than tradicionally "red" 😂 She never said "magenta" though. 🤔 But I stopped spreading the knowlege about it cause I've got sick and tired of people saying that I am wrong or stupid. 🙄 Good to know I was closer to the truth so was my primary school teacher. 🥲 Thank you! ❤😊
I think we should take a hint from printer cartridges which are magenta cyan and yellow. I also wondered why but… you answered that. And even in my college art classes magenta was not a primary color. And barely mentioned as part of the color wheel at all. I think my professor had a grudge….😅
I was shocked, SHOCKED when my dye company's tutorial said the primary colors were Fuschia, Turquoise, and Lemon Yellow. I wonder if what they call fuschia is magenta, now. Life got easier when I just accepted it as I have now accepted Magenta. Thank you
French ultramarine and alizarin crimson makes a brilliant purple, you just need to apply it in thinner layers or thin it down with linseed oil. It looks muddy because the pigments are so strong and the pigment load proportional to the pigment strength is so high, kind of like why indian yellow looks so muddy brown out of the tube but once you put down a stroke that thins out the amount of pigment that light is moving through it brightens up into a rich, fiery yellow. But if you use linseed oil to thin it out you can still have the desired volume of paint without the insanely high pigment load, revealing the true brilliance of the color you mixed without having to dry brush it. Depending on how much of the paint im going to need, i generally mix it dot by dot out of the tubes so that i can slowly build to the pigment ratio i want, which takes forever but is totally worth it both in the end result and in experience gained in mixing colors. If you do it right with french ultramarine and alizarin you can get a purple matching the brilliance of dioxazine, no word of a lie. Sometimes i use a mix of pthalo and ultramarine instead of just ultramarine, and i love adding the purple mix to a mixture of ultramarine, pthalo and manganese/cerulean for a brilliant indigo tone that proves quite handy time and time again. For context i am also a professional artist and i strictly paint with primaries so any secondary or tertiary i want to use i always have to mix on my own, and ive got a bazillion different shades and pigment types of reds, blues, magentas, yellows etc. Also using a mix of alizarin and any magenta for the red components of purple and pink i feel always works better than just one or the other, and i tend to like adding a hint of yellow to my pinks, but thats just me
Also would like to add that primary colors arent actually a thing, its all a societal construct mannnn😵💫😵💫🥴🥴 And also imo quinacridone magenta makes unversatile oranges that i rarely use just like cadmium red makes incredible oranges and sucks at making purple. There is never going to be a one size fits all pigment.
That disclaimer at minute 2 also applies to light with the additive primaries. N additive primary colors specify a convex polygonal gamut on the CIE chromaticity chart. Only colors within that convex hull can be made with sums of those colors. RGB for example defines a triangular gamut, and only colors withing and at the edge of that triangle may be made my combining those three colors.
I first studied color theory back in the ninth grade (1976) and learned all about the color wheel, and I too was taught that the primary colors were red, blue, and yellow. In college I studied graphic design and printing. There I learned about cyan, magenta, yellow, and black and why these colors were used instead. Back then, the only way most people consumed color imagery was through printed material (even though television and film were ubiquitous). It's really hard to argue with an international, highly competitive, multi-billion dollar industry that chose CMYK as a standard. Anyway, after college, I learned that there is still a huge range of colors that cannot be reproduced in CYMK. For flat colors, Pantone inks were used, but for color images emerging technologies like Hexachrome or CMYKOG were developed to address that. Sadly, the last twenty years has seen another paradigm shift, which has shifted consumption of color imagery away from print and physical pieces, and into digital forms. It's great to see creators like you explore how people used to make art using centuries old technologies. Art is still an essential means of human expression.
It's so interesting that magenta, an "artificial" pigment, is a primary, yet it doesn't appear in a rainbow. There are, of course, Reasons for that. But I just drop it here to point out how complex color is. Also, in defense of the RYB, it gives more muted, natural colors, where as CYM is so bright and punchy but it's probably not the best choice for more nature or naturalistic painting. Different palettes are more suited to different subjects and styles. I mean, look at how much Zorn achieved with his palette! And what did he use? Not magenta - RED (and ochre, black, and white.)
not rly m8, if you mix CMY all together you get a chromatic black, so if you want to desaturate a green mixed with C and Y you just add a bit of magenta. you can mix a zorn palette from CMY and white, and you can mix an RYB palette from it. you cant mix a CMY palette from either of those tho, so its objectively superior in every instance.
I love your videos but OMG, what’s the size of your screen? Watch it in my phone was really hard to read those smaller subtitles! Haha (I’m also not a native English speaker so add some time to at least we can pause the video and read). About the video subject: I’m a photographer and omg it’s hard to teach printing to some people “but it looks weird in cmyk” (and that’s why I’m teaching you how to treat your photos for printing). Then I have to explain that red is not primary, subtractive and additive colours etc
Yea i learned this on day 2 of trying to make purple. Young people at craft stores would start telling me the blue+red fallacy, but then i found an older lady worker who gave me the real advice of using Magenta..... 😅
I taught Kinder. & 1st grade for many years and since we didn't have an art teacher I was the best they got. I am guilty of teaching RYB as primary colors. I learned very early in my teaching career that you need at least a decent quality of paint to get anything close to what you'd expect when mixing. R +Y = O only works with Crayola (tempera) paint. (And we were thankful to get Crayola) Other brands & cheaper brands leave you with a vast variety of unpredictable mud but not anything close to orange..or green..or purple. This is when it really doesn't pay to buy it at the dollar stores.
Lol shit. I'm about to go rounds with someone again. I had a debate in your comments for weeks from the shorts. I can't wait to see the the mental gymnastics people are going to do to cling to their childhood teachings.
Wait till they find out that BLUE isn’t a primary colour either ….(in paint) I’m an art student at art school for those wanting confirmation 😊 and I worked with the Zorn palette in 2nd year. My tutor told us that in paint pigment mixing, primary yellow is the ONLY pigment that cannot be made by mixing anything else together. My final painting for the semester I used green mixed with yellow ochre and ivory black!!!! It blew my mind
It's also interesting how the primary colors of light are the secondary colors for pigments, and vice versa. Additive primaries consist of only 1 of 3 specific wavelengths of light. Subtractive primaries are pigments that only absorb 1 of those same 3 wavelengths. There's some neat symmetry going on there, I think. ETA: It was also interesting to see you do a pigment color wheel showing what you get when you treat RBY as primary colors like many of us were taught in elementary school. It definitely limits your options in a way that CYM doesn't. I'm pretty sure that CYM could produce all of the colors on the RGB wheel, but the inverse isn't true.
Explanation for this is that CMY is removing a specific range of light. Remove too much and your colors get way too dark way too quickly when you mix them, because you are removing a lot more light all at once. So the targets are the R/G/B for removal, which are the primaries for light mixing and have the largest impact. Using RGB for pigments would remove too much light instead
We learned this in intermediate school and I remember we all thought it was so stupid. What do you mean, magenta? Cyan who? My TV has little red green and blue dots (I'm old), these are the primary colours! Then we saw it actually work, we were able to make all colours, and it was mind blown moment.
RGB are the primary colours in light, and when you shine a red light + a green light together you get a yellow light. So in light yellow is a secondary colour, made by mixiing 2 primaries. so when RGB are the primary colours the secondary colours turn out to be CMY. In paint its reversed because you are not adding light to a surface, you are subtracting light from a surface. in paint CMY are the primary colours and when you mix 2 of them to get the secondary colours you get RGB. the 2 systems are the same relationship, RGB + CMY, in additive and subtractive light they are reversed as the primary and secondary colours.
First, I love that you are wearing a magenta shirt while waving around a yellow and maybe cyan can. After art school, learning the RBG theory, I apprenticed as a commercial printer(in the 70's) there CMYK was the obvious standard. Later I became a Graphic arts teacher and a visual arts teacher. There I taught both colour theories. You can make all of the same colours using either system but CMYK is easier.
That makes sense.... But I have always thought of it like, everything that is not a primary color are colors you can make by using other colors. And with CMY, blending magenta and yellow you get = RED. Like brilliant red. Blue and red creates a dull purple but never that bright and highly saturated. Magenta is more of a primary color than red at least.
Taking a basic college class where they taught the TRUE basics blew my mind with the CMYK info. It was so much fun too!! I had no idea about WARM ‘red’ mixed with COOL ‘blue’ vs COOL ‘red’ mixed with COOL ‘blue’ like DUDE 😂😂😂
In elementary school we learned that the primary colors are cyan, magenta and lemon yellow (Zitronengelb). That was over 20 years ago and I've always been confused when people say its blue, red and yellow cause magenta is so obviously not red. Even cyan is not really a blue you would instantly think of when hearing blue
I would not be suprised of the idea of 'red yellow blue' as primary colors is taught in kindergarten instead of 'magenta yellow blue' because kids definitely would have a harderer time saying magenta lol.
Like I said, Blue ... It shouldn't be the last, it wasn't the first. If any of them was, it was red, and that is subjective. We can divide anything. Light is white, right? The Jinn, The Light, The Us. Anyway, Imagine a Bare-Set In The Head Position, ב The Beginning, בראשית Then a white, smokeless fire, hot, as hot as you can imagine started to form. The smallest spark of this heat, this white, smokeless, fire, the Jinn were born. The fire burned and the clay formed. The fire burned the clay and a new light was born. The beings of light could travel in beings of clay. The Jinn and Light grew jealous, as the Jinn could not live within the clay. The Jinn were angry because they could not live in the clay, the earths, the galaxy core, the beings of clay. The Light grew jealous the Jinn did not have the same rights, but have helped to create all things. This divided the light, where the angels are formed. The Jinn, means, within the mean, within the medium, within this realm, and in the next. Whatever space is, they are in there, "hidden." All things are made from Plasma, a smokeless white fire. Fire, electricity, atoms, adams, red-men, homa, okla; Think about this, If we all came from the water, all life, why do we have so much hair? You know when you put a cast on your arm? Now come from the water, would you have hair? You'd need to cover your body for that, no? Native's grow very little, almost no body or facial hair. Now cover your body up, cast it, and travel through the cold across the bering straight; Why bare? BR, Foundation, No Foundation. Beerbar, clear your head at the barbers.
Lol, was I the only one who had an elementary art teacher who gave us one set of primary colors for light and a different one for pigments/paints? Because we got two. One for light and one for physical colors (ink, pigment, paint, crayons, etc.). She actually did a full demo with them to show why they were different.
![TEEDEE TADA - DIAMOND NARAKORN X LEGO LYKN [Special Dance Performance]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QgtZedFeumA/mqdefault.jpg)
I really wish I was told you actually needed magenta. Would have saved years of wondering why I couldn’t ever get the colors I wanted. It never made sense until it was compared to a printer. You are awesome btw! Love your content you do such a great job and it’s great that you teach actual color theory. Thanks for sharing the difficult truth 😊
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it 🥹💜
YES! The printer colors are CORRECT! 🙂
Just buy a tube of alizarin and use more linseed oil instead of white paint to thin your deep purples. Use an eyedropper to squirt the linseed oil onto your paint drop by drop
Green and red make magenta. Its so weird. I had to make my own magenta for a painting my mom and i were doing and we didnt have any. It took us forever to get the colour right. Paint is so much fun. Colour theory fries my brain sometimes 😂😂😂😂
@@Alex-gd3fk "just buy a tube of alizarin and use more linseed oil" is making a LOT of assumptions about the specific medium any given person may be using 😆 (all in good fun, but for real, oil paint is not the only medium one way be mixing with the intent to create a colour)
the concept of "primary colors" has existed in some format for over 2000 years, and for the majority of that time, red was almost always chosen as one of those primary colors. HOWEVER it should definitely be noted that the word "magenta" was not invented until the 1850s, when magenta paint was invented.
it's similar to the shift of the word purple. purple originally could have been used for anything from colors that we now might call magenta to nearly blue. this is in part due to the dye tyrian purple, called porphura in greek, which the word purple is derived from. tyrian purple dye could give that same wide range of colors.
or, as another example, look at classical greek. there is no word in classical greek that means "blue" as we would see it today. additionally, ancient greeks often thought of color not just as hues but in terms of brightness. this resulted in the greeks calling the sky "bronze" because it was bright and shiny like bronze plating and homer famously describing the ocean as being "wine dark."
the words we use for colors and the way we think of color is always shifting and we should not be afraid of these changes!!
YES! I love this addition. 👏👏👏
Fascinating!!
There have actually been studies on this: cultures generally obtain words for light and dark, followed by red, with the rest of the color spectrum getting divided by further gradients step by step until blue is almost universally invented last.
Japan actually considered blue a shade of green until well into the 1900s.
Once again, most things return back to linguistics. :) The limits of our language are quite often the limits of our mind.
Slight correction: The sky being "bronze" isn't because it's shiny like plate bronze, but because of the colour of bronze when it oxidises. See the Statue of Liberty as an example! But yes, the rest is true, that's just one mixup because we're more used to seeing metals as metals in their polished state 😊
Surprisingly enough, in my years at university, you have no idea how many painting teachers forced me to paint with RBY and then got upset I couldn't mix the colours they wanted. I learnt on my own to mix them with CMY at home and that's how i've managed to pass those classes. It's like they either wanted people to fail or just never painted in their lives...
I'm sure their art teachers didn't know any better as it SEEMS to make sense. However, the colors in LIGHT are red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. I'm not sure about the indigo though. 🤔
I had a similar experience. Everyone always loved the color of my paintings but when assigned color wheels I failed. Now I teach elementary art and teach cyan yellow magenta.
@@FireflyGirl68 We don't talk about indigo.
@@FireflyGirl68
The Indigo dilemma is actually just a result of English evolution
What Isaac Newton called Blue is now called Cyan and what we now call Blue was called Indigo (hence Indigo jeans) so ROY G BIV should now be ROY G. CyBuVo.
@@FireflyGirl68 primary light colors are RGB, simply because that's what our retina's cones are sensitive to. You can't make a cone in your retina more happy/excited than by giving it exactly the wavelength it is specialized in, so those can't be mixed better than their pure forms for our perception.
Thank you so much for making this video. I was in college art class before I learned that magenta and cyan were the true primaries of pigment, and red and blue (and green) were the primaries of light. It's not just kindergarten that lied, but all of high school even! I spent a few years working at a Montessori school teaching art and I was always sure to tell all my students the truth about colors 💗🩵💛🖤💔💚💙
Genuinely helped my art a lot when I realized I could just use CMYK for colors LOL
Also, since I find that having an explanation for the science behind this: pigments are subtractive, not additive. Our eyes perceive color through the three wavelengths of light our eyes can recognize, those being red, blue, and green, AKA the primary colors of light. So when we see something magenta, that actually means we're seeing it as a mix of blue and red light. Magenta pigment gives us this effect because it absorbs all the green light, scattering just the blue and red back for us to see. To think of it in terms of computer colors with RBG, it subtracts the G from the mixture and just reflects the RB back. That's also why you can mix it with yellow to make red: yellow does to blue light what magenta does to green, so now you're taking both the blue and the green out of the equation, and leaving only the red behind.
This also, interestingly, means that primary colors of light are secondary colors of pigment and vice versa, and why mixing all the pigments together gets you black, while mixing all the lights together gets you white.
So the primary colors are red blue and green.😂
@@Fohnahfor screens like your phone or pc, yes. For mixing paints together, no.
Mixing all the pigments together for black gets expensive quick in a printer, hence black ink
Elementary art teacher who teaches magenta , yellow, cyan, here. I started binging your videos a few days ago and got so excited to see you are a magenta fan! I teach my kids people didn’t always have magenta but now we do and it’s very useful. You can make red from magenta and also a non muddy purple. My kids love learning something most adults don’t know.
As a Kinder-1st grade teacher without an art teacher at our school, I confess I've taught RYB as primaries and CMY as primaries of light. ex if you mix CBY as light (or cellophane + light source) you get closer to rainbow-like O,G & P/Violet. It doesn't work though with tempera paint.
So when asked "what are primary colors" the proper answer is "are we talking light or paint and dyes?"
yes, and the 2 sets work together.
RGB are primaries in light, and when u mix them you get the secondary colours CMY.
CMY are the primaries in paint and dye, and when you mix them you get the secondaries RGB.
RGB are primaries in additive light, when you are adding light to a surface to achieve a colour, and CMY are primaries when its subtractive, when you are putting a substance on a surface that absorbs light to achieve a colour.
My exact thoughts on the opening of this video! Paints don't work like dyes do in a printer
@@cinderblockstudios essentially they do.
Additive (light) vs. subtractive (pigment).
@@necaacen - Reading your post, I think I felt a "pop" in my brain. Either I stripped a gear or I created a new high gear. Not sure which it is, lol! 🤯😜
Retired art teacher here. Once watched a student try to mix yellow with other colors. It was really cool. I told him the theory behind primary colors. But, cheerful and optimistic, bradda was convinced he could do it! So I hung out with him as he worked. Other students became interested. Some students believed he could do it. Others were skeptical. I requested both sides show respect for the other.
In the end, the student acknowledged he could not do it. But felt he could with access to a more extensive palette. It sparked some great discussions and some keen interest in subtractive color theory.
The kind of experience only another teacher can fully appreciate.The kind of experience that makes a teacher grateful for the profession they chose.
I don’t get it, why can’t he mix yellow w other colors?
@@yokusfrequently9362
No. It was about trying to make yellow from other colors.
Yellow is a primary color. Other colors come from it (and red and blue). Not the other way around.
@@reddiver7293 ohhh I thought you meant mixing other colors with yellow
@@yokusfrequently9362
I got that. Sorry if I was not clear enough.
I'm personally more of a fan of split primaries, acknowledging like 2 sets of primaries, the traditional primaries and the CMYK ones. There's a lot to the traditional ones, but if you want proper, clean mixes, the CMYK ones are the way to go. That's also mind of what we were taught in school and pretty close to what those opaque water color (Deckfarbeb are kinda integral to school art classes here in Germany) are set up like. I still set up my water colour sets and other materials like those ❤
I also like the split primaries thing. I like it because you get different complimentary colors depending on what set your using. red is opposite green in one and cyan in the other.
But “true primaries” don’t really exist or can’t exist to be exact.
What we have access to are relative primaries, colors that we mix to obtain a decent color space within the visual spectrum.
The more primaries you use the larger the color spectrum will be.
Most professional artists use 6, 8, or 10 individual colors.
There is actually at least 4 types of primary colors
Traditional: RYB on W
Additive: RGB on Bl (in screens)
Subtractive: CMY on W (in modern coloring
Contrary: RGYB (Biologically how our eyes work)
Edit: these are only the ones I know. There probably are many more I don't know about.
I recently started deep diving into colour, and the algo chucked your shorts videos at me. At first I was resistant based on the generally negative algo experience, but wadayknow I was finally being shown something that is not only entertaining but also super useful. You've got good character and acting chops. Love the art too.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it 🥹
BTW. There is no cyan pigment, you have to use phtalo blue with white, it works better than cerulean ;)
Great tip, thanks so much!!
Yeah since pthalo blue is the closest pigment towards cyan and been used as a cyan alternative. The same thing goes to quinacridone magenta that could be categorized as rose since it's lean more towards red. There's other pigment that actually really close towards cyan/magenta. The problem is they're toxic and have bigger pigment particles than the rest of the pigments which makes them bad at mixing
@@joy0953I had no idea but that is good to know the pigments do exist!
As alternative a very thinned down Phtaloblue works to, it is on its own to intense for the other two primary colours.
THANK YOU FOR CLEARING THIS UP!!! i HATE making purple with red and blue because it always comes out too blue or too red!!! also, i've made my favorite color, Windows Teal, MULTIPLE times with blue, yellow, and white! and i've even done it with green, blue, and white!!
I found out about the color theory and how red wasn’t a part of the primary colors when I was younger. It solved all my questions about how would use a pure red and a pure yellow paint and it wouldn’t make a pure orange and then I tried using pink and it worked perfectly. Or something around a pink. I also always got annoyed that when I would mix red and blue paint together, it would kind of just make like this muddy brown color and wouldn’t look like a purple.
Pigments are a little more complicated than that, because the absorption spectrum of a pigment is usually not “even” and if two colors are mixed the absorption spectrum’s add to each other.
Similarly, “primary colors” can be any and all colors in a limited palette. There are no true primaries, and all that primaries do is allow you to access a certain color space within the color spectrum, therefore the more colors you have the more of the color spectrum you can use, and the more vibrant the colors you will obtain. Professional artists use 6-12 individual paints.
I think we should just use 6 different primary colors. It's difficult to mix really vibrant shades of green with yellow and any kind of blue. Our eyes, when a person isn't colorblind, are highly attuned to different shades of green, so it really should be represented among the primary colors. And to have the 6 most visible parts of the color spectrum represented makes sense. All the colors red, blue, cyan and magenta fits into that.
This is a throwback to the time I got into acrylic painting. I was so pissed I couldn't get the pinks and purples I needed with red.
I was just looking at my red, blue and white and thought "there is no way I am going to get the color I need with these colors". Magenta comes along and opens up a whole new palette of colors and shades. It was like a revalation.
Thing is megenta usually isn't included in variaty packs and I just don't know why. it is such an important color and you need it but I always have to get it seperatly.
When I was in art school, I was fascinated with that shade where blue and violet meet. It was so rewarding when people would look at my work and disagree as to whether a color was blue or, as they put it, purple.
@@reddiver7293 haha "it is not purple! it is violett!!!" my ancient art teacher.
@@Lunch2391
I guess your lack of reading comprehension overlooked the words, "...or, as they put it.,,"
You missed that part, huh?
But not the part where you misspelled violet.
I may be old but, unlike you, I can read and spell beyond a 6th grade capacity.
@@reddiver7293 okay. you have issues if you need to point out a small spelling mistake (by a non native english speaker.)
I don't care if you call it violet or purple. My art teacher did care and you do to. if that offends you I don't know how I can help you.
@@Lunch2391
You call them issues. In America, we call them mistakes. And, in addition to grammatical errors, you are clearly unable to comprehend rather obvious nuances. Which, for someone with English as a second language, is understandable. But not when you correct mistakes that are, in fact, the result of your inability to fully understand written English.
Are you really such a fool to think someone with an MFA does not know basic subtractive color theory?
People need to seriously forget about RYB. It’s an old model that only makes muddy vague colors, unless that’s the goal. CMY is the true primary paints. It’s good this is becoming more common knowledge.
6 year old me who claimed that pink was a primary color is very happy right now
When I first learned this like just a couple years ago, I decided to make rainbow tapioca pearls with just magenta, yellow, and cyan.. they were the most vibrant things I've ever made in the kitchen and the colors mixed so bright and happy... been in love with those 3 colors ever since
Oh, man! You could have documented that whole project and submitted it as conceptual art in a juried show.
I hope you do more of your culinary paintings!
You have solved an ancient, enraging mystery for me. It used to make me SO MAD that I could never mix a purple paint as a kid! Seriously, one of the most frustrating things in my life. Is there anything worse than being five years old, and having a very certain (if unknowingly MUCH simplified) grasp of the facts, only to have those facts betray you???
As a fellow oil painter, I super appreciate this video! Love the color wheels you did with the RYB and MYC haha. I need to buy some magenta…
I work at an interior paint store, my job is to tint paint into whatever colour of choice etc.
While yes there are technically 3 different red pigments that we use, if we were to tint a bright red or “primary red” that most people think of… bet you can guess which tints get used!!
(The answer is primarily magenta and yellow hehe. Because there is no red tint that would create that shade of red, at least when it comes to paint)
Love this video. Thank you for talking about this, I have felt this way for years! I'm a visually impaired artist and I have one request for your future videos. When you show text on screen, can you please show it a little bit bigger and a tiny bit slower? It was challenging to follow along, even when I paused the video multiple times. Thanks from a new fan! 😀
Thank you so much for the tips! I’ll definitely make the text more readable- I totally get that! 💜
I agree. I have pretty much given up trying to read the writing, as by the time I start to figure it out, its gone.
I got here from one of your shorts on lead white and other poisonous paints, but today I learned something! Thank you for this video, especially since I have a toddler who's going to be starting to learn basic color theory in school soon-ish. I'm excited to see how their school teaches it and I suspect we'll have a good time performing the experiment you did at the end with your two color wheels so that they can see the difference for themselves.
I'm saving this video to post every time this bloody argument comes up on FB.
As someone who spent 16yrs working in theatre, understanding colour theory was my bread and butter when doing lighting design.
I work at a gym at the membership desk. We do a trivia question everyday. I put the question "what are the true primary colors?" Answer options were: a) red, green, and blue b) red, yellow, and blue c) black, white, and gray or d) yellow, cyan, and magenta. Our gym really caters to the older population in the morning. I had member ready to fight me over the answer (which was D of course). They were telling I was wrong and asking what made me an expert in the primary colors. Heh, I have a degree in art, I took color theory and film photography courses. I think I know s thing or to, I said.
They were even more distressed when I did a trivia explain that dogs see in shades of gray, brown, yellow and blue and not black and white. It's hard to get people to see the truth. Like the only way we can experience purple is by seeing red and blue LIGHT simultaneously. There is no such thing as purple light.
There are no "true" primary colors. If you really took courses in color theory and photography you ought to have known the simple basics on how light and color works and why things appear as a certain color to us.
I somehow got all the way through my MFA in 2007 without being taught this but interestingly a good friend and classmate had read about it on his own & had started experimenting with CMYK in painting. I was eager to see the results but I don't recall ever seeing them before he changed schools. It only occurred to me later that before I started painting with the "required" oil colors I had to have for my undergrad painting classes, I'd already been painting that way with acrylics because I'd been generously bequeathed a box of high quality used acrylics with those colors (among others) in it, couldn't afford my own, and those were the closest to "primary" RBY in the box. I also couldn't afford decent brushes and used to paint with my hands & then add details with a palette knife. It changed my whole painting style going forward.
I don’t know why but I understood that cyan magenta and yellow were the colors you used on printer cartridges and on softwares, but for some reason never connected that to color theory when I painted. This freaking explains why my primary red and primary blue look like a brown purple!! I always get so frustrated that I ended up just buying a bright violet color paint bc I do not trust primary red and primary blue to give me purple 😂😂😂 you just articulated what I’ve been angry about for the last 3 months. Thank you for this video! It was very informative and hilarious to watch
great video, great channel. i don't think i have seen any other that educates people about this kind of technology in such a fun way. definitely gonna share it with fellow artists.
Thank you so, so much! I really appreciate that. :) let me know if there are any things in particular you would like to see a video on in the future!
I just found your channel and love your style! I get Caitlin Doughty of pain vibes. Please more long form videos! They are wonderful!
i randomly came across this and almost cried to the heavens with relief, it's so hard to make a nice purple with red and blue
Thank you for making all these clips about colour. I try to convince people for years that red is not a primary. I come from the printing business and there no convincing is nessesary...but so many artist still learn the wrong so called facts about colour. Its allways fun to watch your videos...as a life long learner I learned so much from you over the years... especially about the toxisity of the traditional oil colours. BTW.... like your fury studio assistance! xs
Amen Sister! As an Elementary Art teacher, I taught, demonstrated & had the children MIX paints to see red + blue = mud!!!
Love getting information. Love your informative videos on poisonous or toxic ' killer colors. I understand about printing primary being different from taught primary. Ive been an artist but never got into artistic painting( as yet), but structural painting is another horse of another color. Reason is it uses both sorts and bases to get named scientifically extracted colors. Automotive and vehicle painting is yet another sort with many pigments being as you refer, or better, the double or multiple color wheel.
Would really like to see you do a similar video discussing the difference between cyan and blue as a paint. When I look up cyan paint it seems like everyone has a different idea of what cyan looks like in paint. I feel like I can mix cyan, unlike magenta with paint. Please help me and explain this madness
Really simple, “primary colors” are any set of colors that you have, that when mixed can’t reproduce any one color you have available to its full saturation.
For example, if you have yellow, green and blue, you will be able to mix blue+yellow to obtain a green, but not as vibrant as the green pigment you have.
If you are smart about your pigment choices you will be able to reproduce any hue, however less saturated than “the actual color” that’s how you can mix purple and yellow to obtain some form of red.
Huge thanks to you for this Bekah. Have only just discovered your channel and now subscribed!
I dabble with paint, and have always believe the red, yellow blue colour theory. I found the whole post interesting, but the last minute was what blew my mind. I have admired the work of some artists for years, wondering how they achieved their beautiful vibrant, unmuddied colours. I had thought it might just be the brand of paints, but after seeing your cyan magenta yellow colour swatch, it became clear me that they use that palette instead of the red yellow blue palette. So, huge kudos to you for making this video. It has answered a question that has really bugged me for years.
Thank you for this video about CMY being the true primaries. I would add that Fluorescent Pink will also work for mixing a vibrant purple or orange.
Nice, thanks for clearing that up for me
For young painters out there; give painting with Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Pthalo Green, and Paynes Gray a go as your base primaries just for funsies. It’ll teach you how versatile colours are
I’m 65 and now it makes sense as to why I couldn’t get a good purple, wahoo magenta
I've never worked with acrylic or oil paint, but red and blue watercolor paints tend to make a passable purple for my needs.
As someone who knows too much about color, such as why light is made up of "RBG" and printing and photography is made of "CYMK", and even why mixing magenta with yellow you can get red; I have realized that the color wheels are all lies. There is no such thing as a primary color.
And pigments react to one another, adding and neutralizing aspects of each one that are mixed together. Especially when dealing with natural pigments. Chemistry is a miraculous thing.
We must fight against the system and bring this information to the public’s eyes!!!! #primaries_are_a_lie
As a colorist in the comic book industry I'm screaming at the top of my lungs (internally) FINALLYYYYYY!!!! A video I can just link people to watch so I don't have to waste anymore energy explaining this sh-t. Thank you for putting in the effort to make this. It's easy to understand. I will be using your channel as a resource for people to learn more about paint and color theory. This rules. You rule.
Im not big on art but ever since i found you ive loved learning abiut it so much thank you
Understand how folks are not big on the art part of themselves. But your art is there. Waiting for you if at some point decide you want to use it.
@@reddiver7293 makes a lot of sense I like it just don't. Like doing it as I'm never satisfied with what I create
@@420iceninja
I hear that. A large part of doing art is learning to accept the way one does art. And a huge part of people starting and then stopping art is the difference between their idea and what they actually produce. Doing art is a process that teaches us to not just accept how we do art, but to value it, as well.
Peace.
Those wings 🔪🔪🔪
You crack me up!!! Keep up the amazing work.
This is why CMYK is used for printing. As a former newspaper artist I learned how adjust graphics for proper color mixing for offset presses. Why would painting be any different? Cyan and magenta are necessary if one wants to blend desired colors.
RGB are primary cpolors for light, magenta cyan and yellow are primary colors for paint. So you have to specify if it is primary for light or paint.
Great video .
A story about a Robin.. .
In England, way back in time. A humble little songbird was named Robin redbreast ( even though it's actually orange).
At the time, we didn't have a word for the colour orange, so it was called redbreast. As orange, was seen as red .
A truer red , would be the breast of a male bullfinch, yet his name doesn't include the word red , at all . 😊
I luv your backdrop, it is beautiful! I would like to see more of your work.
This was fabulously explained ty
It makes sense. It's the same thing with printer ink. The primary colors for printer ink are Cyan, MAGENTA, and Yellow, which are used with blacK. And the Magenta and Yellow inks combine to make the red color on paper.
Hi Bekah - in case you need to explain it again, I suggest you refer to the additive and subtractive colour models. The major difference that I want to draw your attention to is that, when people talk about "primary colours" they often think about additive model. Which makes sense when explained e.g. with coloured filters used in an LCD monitor, or on top of a torch, or any other source of light. In additive mode, only a selected part of visible spectrum (to which our colour receptors are attuned, that is blue, green or red) is delivered to eyes, and with such three colour filters we can simply add the parts of spectrum, as they pass through the filters, to balance the intensity of each part, hence creating any perceptible colour. This does not work in subtractive model which is used for everything that reflects light (like paintings - which famously existed long before the invention of computer monitors or television or even coloured glass). In subtractive model, we do not have filters, instead we have pigments, and they play a different role in building perception of colour - they reflect a part of spectrum, while absorbing other parts. That's a big problem if your pigments are e.g. red and blue - because red pigment will absorb both blue and green, while blue pigment will absorb both red and green. When you mix two such pigments, you are just getting something that absorbs green much more than it absorbs red or blue (while also absorbing both), and that's basically "dirty reddish" instead of purple, as you very well demonstrated in the video. This is why primary colours in subtractive colour model (i.e. as used for paintings or anything that does not emit its own light) have to absorb only one colour (of the three to which are colour receptors are attuned) and fully reflect the other two. Which is why, in pigments, we have primary colours: magenta (which only absorbs green), cyan (which only absorbs red) and yellow (which only absorbs blue).
It is also worth noting that, had our colour receptors been different, the primary colours in both models would have been different, too ! (and I cut here, because it's getting above my head).
This is why it is color theory and not color facts. Yes, with the spread of full color printing, we have discovered that primary color have shifted and that black is needed to bring the image into focus. We also have so many more options of pigments now than they had 100 years ago. Was a fun video demonstrating just how flawed theory is verse practice.
Also, color printing can use halftone, a means of mixing in white that uses the paper rather than a white pigment.
@seekingthelovethatgodmeans7648 A halftone is done by a screen effect- it is dots that have a variable of density. It can be used over other colors or the paper color. It is not a separate color. So, it still only uses the four colors of ink, it is the density (amount) of the ink coverage that changes.
This totally explains why I could never get certain shades of purple or green, etc. Now i shall buy the correct "primary" colours. Thank you for this 😉
Professional artist here.
Magenta is a very magical color, but RBY primaries are the most efficient way of communicating color in my opinion. Getting that perfect purple is great, but the tricky part is going backwards. I like to keep the words "red, blue, and yellow" very vague so I can look at this weird color and deconstruct it in my head until I determine if it's classified as a red, yellow or blue.
So with that being said, even though Magenta is it's own color, I personally classify it as a red for max efficiency, which would revert it back to the RYB color system.
its not the most efficient way of communicating colour. CMY are the primary colours in paint and ink, and RGB are the secondary colours. theres nothing efficient about being wrong, youve just got used to being wrong for a long time and dont like change.
@@necaacen You don't understand what he means by the phrase "communicating color"
@@RobespierreThePoof yes, i do, hes just wrong.
Yeah, I forgot about the difference between light color theory and pigment color theory! I tend to have trouble with colors even though I love them so dearly~ But sure enough, I was looking at my watercolors after picking them back up again and my ‘Primary Red’ from Windsor & Newton PR170 is a kind of pinkish magenta tint when I activate it! And the ‘Primary Blue’ literally says ‘(CMYK Cyan)’ directly underneath that. Man I gotta study up on this stuff again, it’s been years since I took a color theory class and I STILL struggle with differentiating value and not just hue in my works. Especially the digital ones;;; Corel Painter 4 I miss you come back to me
I use acrylic paints, and a few years ago I noticed by accident how magenta + orange = red, and it is now my favorite way to make a red color rather than using the ones right out of the tube, if I want a really vibrant red.
Dunno how I found this video but I think some of the confusion comes from the light spectrum. RGB color model is used quite often then. Tbh I forgot all about the primary colors I was taught, I coded HTML as a hobby and used alot of hex colours so RGB became the standard in my mind lol. Then you have CYMK for printing ofc, but that is like you mentioned here pigments and what not.
RGB and CMY work together. In light RGB are the 3 primary colours and that means CMY are the secondary colours because red light + green light = yellow, blue light + red light = magenta etc.
in paint and ink etc CMY are the primary colours which means RGB are the secondary colours. magenta + yellow = red, yellow + cyan = green.
so RGB and CMY work together as the primary and secondary colours depending on if your light is additive or subtractive they are reversed.
we see colours because of the frequencies of light going into our eyes. RGB are the primary colours when its additive light, where you are adding light, and CMY are the primaries when you are subtracting light, eg a white canvas is reflecting the full light spectrum, you paint yellow paint onto it and that paint absorbs (subtracts) all the frequencies of light other than yellow so only the yellow is now bouncing off and entering our eyes.
No. The colors of the rainbow are described as ROY G BIV - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. So the color wheel is typically attributed to those colors when teaching children and whatnot. It is simply "familiar" that way. Then you have old documents with color experimentation that seemed to back the RYB primaries color wheel. Extremely old documents, from Da Vinci or something. There was no mistake there with how the information was taught before. We simply know better now, but somehow the updated information wasn't spread everywhere, which is why there is confusion
Red, green, and blue are additive, for light, cyan, magenta, and yellow are subtractive for paint.
To add to this thread - I don't paint with black unless black is the focus of the painting.
I make black with RED AND BLUE. Pure red and blue out of the tube, in the right proportions (because red tends to be more saturated, you often don't need much) make black. Or a dark enough grey to pass as black, and one that blends with other colors better than any black tube paint does.
Ha! I do remember my art teacher in primary school told us that true red is in fact rather pinkish than tradicionally "red" 😂 She never said "magenta" though. 🤔 But I stopped spreading the knowlege about it cause I've got sick and tired of people saying that I am wrong or stupid. 🙄 Good to know I was closer to the truth so was my primary school teacher. 🥲 Thank you! ❤😊
Im 64, I wish I knew this sooner. I did however share your channel with my 14 year old granddaughter who is already a better artist than I ever was.
I think we should take a hint from printer cartridges which are magenta cyan and yellow. I also wondered why but… you answered that. And even in my college art classes magenta was not a primary color. And barely mentioned as part of the color wheel at all. I think my professor had a grudge….😅
I was shocked, SHOCKED when my dye company's tutorial said the primary colors were Fuschia, Turquoise, and Lemon Yellow. I wonder if what they call fuschia is magenta, now. Life got easier when I just accepted it as I have now accepted Magenta. Thank you
French ultramarine and alizarin crimson makes a brilliant purple, you just need to apply it in thinner layers or thin it down with linseed oil. It looks muddy because the pigments are so strong and the pigment load proportional to the pigment strength is so high, kind of like why indian yellow looks so muddy brown out of the tube but once you put down a stroke that thins out the amount of pigment that light is moving through it brightens up into a rich, fiery yellow. But if you use linseed oil to thin it out you can still have the desired volume of paint without the insanely high pigment load, revealing the true brilliance of the color you mixed without having to dry brush it. Depending on how much of the paint im going to need, i generally mix it dot by dot out of the tubes so that i can slowly build to the pigment ratio i want, which takes forever but is totally worth it both in the end result and in experience gained in mixing colors. If you do it right with french ultramarine and alizarin you can get a purple matching the brilliance of dioxazine, no word of a lie. Sometimes i use a mix of pthalo and ultramarine instead of just ultramarine, and i love adding the purple mix to a mixture of ultramarine, pthalo and manganese/cerulean for a brilliant indigo tone that proves quite handy time and time again.
For context i am also a professional artist and i strictly paint with primaries so any secondary or tertiary i want to use i always have to mix on my own, and ive got a bazillion different shades and pigment types of reds, blues, magentas, yellows etc. Also using a mix of alizarin and any magenta for the red components of purple and pink i feel always works better than just one or the other, and i tend to like adding a hint of yellow to my pinks, but thats just me
Also would like to add that primary colors arent actually a thing, its all a societal construct mannnn😵💫😵💫🥴🥴
And also imo quinacridone magenta makes unversatile oranges that i rarely use just like cadmium red makes incredible oranges and sucks at making purple. There is never going to be a one size fits all pigment.
Love your videos so much 🥰 You're so knowledgeable and articulate yet have such a fun sense of humor! Love!
That disclaimer at minute 2 also applies to light with the additive primaries. N additive primary colors specify a convex polygonal gamut on the CIE chromaticity chart. Only colors within that convex hull can be made with sums of those colors. RGB for example defines a triangular gamut, and only colors withing and at the edge of that triangle may be made my combining those three colors.
F NileRed, me and my homies only watch NileMagenta.
Ahahahaha 😂
Lol
I first studied color theory back in the ninth grade (1976) and learned all about the color wheel, and I too was taught that the primary colors were red, blue, and yellow. In college I studied graphic design and printing. There I learned about cyan, magenta, yellow, and black and why these colors were used instead. Back then, the only way most people consumed color imagery was through printed material (even though television and film were ubiquitous). It's really hard to argue with an international, highly competitive, multi-billion dollar industry that chose CMYK as a standard. Anyway, after college, I learned that there is still a huge range of colors that cannot be reproduced in CYMK. For flat colors, Pantone inks were used, but for color images emerging technologies like Hexachrome or CMYKOG were developed to address that. Sadly, the last twenty years has seen another paradigm shift, which has shifted consumption of color imagery away from print and physical pieces, and into digital forms. It's great to see creators like you explore how people used to make art using centuries old technologies. Art is still an essential means of human expression.
It's so interesting that magenta, an "artificial" pigment, is a primary, yet it doesn't appear in a rainbow. There are, of course, Reasons for that. But I just drop it here to point out how complex color is. Also, in defense of the RYB, it gives more muted, natural colors, where as CYM is so bright and punchy but it's probably not the best choice for more nature or naturalistic painting. Different palettes are more suited to different subjects and styles. I mean, look at how much Zorn achieved with his palette! And what did he use? Not magenta - RED (and ochre, black, and white.)
not rly m8, if you mix CMY all together you get a chromatic black, so if you want to desaturate a green mixed with C and Y you just add a bit of magenta. you can mix a zorn palette from CMY and white, and you can mix an RYB palette from it. you cant mix a CMY palette from either of those tho, so its objectively superior in every instance.
Well I learned some random facts about paint colors today. I just think you have pretty eyes and a distinctive voice!
Thank youuuuu for thisss! Been wondering if I was crazy!!
RGB is Additive colors. Pass light through filters and they mix nicely into your Secondary colors. Mix all three and you get White.
This is why I buy purple oil paint.
I love your videos but OMG, what’s the size of your screen? Watch it in my phone was really hard to read those smaller subtitles! Haha (I’m also not a native English speaker so add some time to at least we can pause the video and read).
About the video subject: I’m a photographer and omg it’s hard to teach printing to some people “but it looks weird in cmyk” (and that’s why I’m teaching you how to treat your photos for printing). Then I have to explain that red is not primary, subtractive and additive colours etc
😾: "Release me, Wench!"
👩🏼🎨: "No."
🤣🤣🤣
okay now mix alizarin crimson with yellow.
you will never be able recreate a cad red light, because color is a spectrum, not a wheel
Merlin's Pants! You cannot just toss Cedric Diggory's death at me like that! I have several questions, starting with: How Dare You?
As Shak said in a printer commercial ...... Magenta! it is always the first color to run out in a color printer !
Yea i learned this on day 2 of trying to make purple. Young people at craft stores would start telling me the blue+red fallacy, but then i found an older lady worker who gave me the real advice of using Magenta..... 😅
I taught Kinder. & 1st grade for many years and since we didn't have an art teacher I was the best they got. I am guilty of teaching RYB as primary colors. I learned very early in my teaching career that you need at least a decent quality of paint to get anything close to what you'd expect when mixing.
R +Y = O only works with Crayola (tempera) paint. (And we were thankful to get Crayola) Other brands & cheaper brands leave you with a vast variety of unpredictable mud but not anything close to orange..or green..or purple. This is when it really doesn't pay to buy it at the dollar stores.
Also true re: watercolor paint. If you have to go cheap or elementary - I've only found Crayola (in the US) to mix colors "correctly"
Lol shit. I'm about to go rounds with someone again. I had a debate in your comments for weeks from the shorts. I can't wait to see the the mental gymnastics people are going to do to cling to their childhood teachings.
This explains why I can't get a nice purple when using food dye!
Wait till they find out that BLUE isn’t a primary colour either ….(in paint)
I’m an art student at art school for those wanting confirmation 😊 and I worked with the Zorn palette in 2nd year. My tutor told us that in paint pigment mixing, primary yellow is the ONLY pigment that cannot be made by mixing anything else together. My final painting for the semester I used green mixed with yellow ochre and ivory black!!!! It blew my mind
It's also interesting how the primary colors of light are the secondary colors for pigments, and vice versa. Additive primaries consist of only 1 of 3 specific wavelengths of light. Subtractive primaries are pigments that only absorb 1 of those same 3 wavelengths. There's some neat symmetry going on there, I think.
ETA: It was also interesting to see you do a pigment color wheel showing what you get when you treat RBY as primary colors like many of us were taught in elementary school. It definitely limits your options in a way that CYM doesn't. I'm pretty sure that CYM could produce all of the colors on the RGB wheel, but the inverse isn't true.
Explanation for this is that CMY is removing a specific range of light. Remove too much and your colors get way too dark way too quickly when you mix them, because you are removing a lot more light all at once. So the targets are the R/G/B for removal, which are the primaries for light mixing and have the largest impact. Using RGB for pigments would remove too much light instead
We learned this in intermediate school and I remember we all thought it was so stupid. What do you mean, magenta? Cyan who? My TV has little red green and blue dots (I'm old), these are the primary colours!
Then we saw it actually work, we were able to make all colours, and it was mind blown moment.
RGB are the primary colours in light, and when you shine a red light + a green light together you get a yellow light. So in light yellow is a secondary colour, made by mixiing 2 primaries. so when RGB are the primary colours the secondary colours turn out to be CMY.
In paint its reversed because you are not adding light to a surface, you are subtracting light from a surface. in paint CMY are the primary colours and when you mix 2 of them to get the secondary colours you get RGB.
the 2 systems are the same relationship, RGB + CMY, in additive and subtractive light they are reversed as the primary and secondary colours.
First, I love that you are wearing a magenta shirt while waving around a yellow and maybe cyan can. After art school, learning the RBG theory, I apprenticed as a commercial printer(in the 70's) there CMYK was the obvious standard. Later I became a Graphic arts teacher and a visual arts teacher. There I taught both colour theories. You can make all of the same colours using either system but CMYK is easier.
That makes sense.... But I have always thought of it like, everything that is not a primary color are colors you can make by using other colors. And with CMY, blending magenta and yellow you get = RED. Like brilliant red. Blue and red creates a dull purple but never that bright and highly saturated.
Magenta is more of a primary color than red at least.
Welp, you convinced me! But I also believed this before I watched the video…
Oh my god, kid me was right when being suspicious of red because i could mix it from pink and orange paint i had
Taking a basic college class where they taught the TRUE basics blew my mind with the CMYK info. It was so much fun too!! I had no idea about WARM ‘red’ mixed with COOL ‘blue’ vs COOL ‘red’ mixed with COOL ‘blue’ like DUDE 😂😂😂
Your short got me here
I enjoy her smile ❤️
In elementary school we learned that the primary colors are cyan, magenta and lemon yellow (Zitronengelb). That was over 20 years ago and I've always been confused when people say its blue, red and yellow cause magenta is so obviously not red. Even cyan is not really a blue you would instantly think of when hearing blue
Frustrating that paint sets often come with RBY instead of CMY as a "primary set". From actual art paint stores!
4:38 THE FACE WHEN PAUSED HERE IS SO FUNNY!!!
I would not be suprised of the idea of 'red yellow blue' as primary colors is taught in kindergarten instead of 'magenta yellow blue' because kids definitely would have a harderer time saying magenta lol.
Like I said,
Blue ...
It shouldn't be the last, it wasn't the first. If any of them was, it was red, and that is subjective.
We can divide anything.
Light is white, right?
The Jinn, The Light, The Us.
Anyway,
Imagine a Bare-Set In The Head Position, ב The Beginning, בראשית
Then a white, smokeless fire, hot, as hot as you can imagine started to form.
The smallest spark of this heat, this white, smokeless, fire, the Jinn were born.
The fire burned and the clay formed.
The fire burned the clay and a new light was born.
The beings of light could travel in beings of clay.
The Jinn and Light grew jealous, as the Jinn could not live within the clay.
The Jinn were angry because they could not live in the clay, the earths, the galaxy core, the beings of clay.
The Light grew jealous the Jinn did not have the same rights, but have helped to create all things.
This divided the light, where the angels are formed.
The Jinn, means, within the mean, within the medium, within this realm, and in the next. Whatever space is, they are in there, "hidden."
All things are made from Plasma, a smokeless white fire. Fire, electricity, atoms, adams, red-men, homa, okla;
Think about this,
If we all came from the water, all life, why do we have so much hair?
You know when you put a cast on your arm?
Now come from the water, would you have hair?
You'd need to cover your body for that, no?
Native's grow very little, almost no body or facial hair.
Now cover your body up, cast it, and travel through the cold across the bering straight;
Why bare? BR, Foundation, No Foundation.
Beerbar, clear your head at the barbers.
Young Lass, you are a masterpiece. Or as we geezers say, cute as a bugs ear😍
Lol, was I the only one who had an elementary art teacher who gave us one set of primary colors for light and a different one for pigments/paints? Because we got two. One for light and one for physical colors (ink, pigment, paint, crayons, etc.). She actually did a full demo with them to show why they were different.