Why Your Art Teacher Lied About Primary Colors
In elementary school, my art teacher said the primary colors were red, blue, and yellow. I believed my art teacher. I looked up to my art teacher. And what does she do in return? She betrays me!
Just as parents explain one day that Santa Clause isn’t real, Wikipedia explained to me that red, blue and yellow are not the primary colors:
In particular natural cyan and magenta pigments were hard to come by, and therefore blue and red hues were used respectively. Thus to this day it is widely taught that red, yellow and blue are the primary colors and that orange, green and purple the secondary colors. In reality it is impossible to obtain a saturated green by mixing blue and yellow or a saturated purple by mixing blue and red. This practical problem is often solved by calling pink “red” and light blue “blue”.
Calling pink “red”? What has the world come to? Don’t art teachers think we can handle the truth?
If you’re reading this, Mrs. Whatever-Your-Name-Is, I expect a letter of apology.
November 26th, 2006
Maureen Stone, who presents on color theory at the visualization conference I attend each year, has a good book on digital color theory.
If you’re looking for more untruths try the explanation commonly given for why airplanes fly, or information on lactic acid.
November 26th, 2006
By the way, the thingie that records the number of comments is not working correctly. Please see http://www.jimcarson.com/nerd.jpg
November 27th, 2006
Thanks, Jim! Those links look interesting.
And the comment thing was just a glitch, I guess. It said I needed to approve one of your comments, and once I did everything worked like it should.
December 11th, 2006
Your elementary school art teacher is correct. The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. They combine to make secondary colors which are green, orange, and purple. If you want to be a PAINTER, one who mixes REAL paints not on a computer screen, you will not get white by mixing red, blue, and yellow. You will get something close to black. That’s it.
December 14th, 2006
Thanks for commenting, Brenda! I still have to disagree with you, though. While it’s true that red, blue and yellow are still often considered the primary colors in the painting world, they can’t actually produce every color. That’s why printers use cyan, magenta and yellow, not red, blue, and yellow. From what I understand, painters don’t actually create every color by mixing red, blue and yellow. They mix many different colors together to get what they need.
I suggest you read Wikipedia’s page on the RYB Color Model, as well as this page: The primary colors are not red, blue, and yellow. On a computer screen, the primary colors are red, blue, and green. They all mix to produce white. For mixing real paints/pigments, the true primary colors are cyan, magenta and yellow. They all mix to produce black, or something very close to black.
July 30th, 2008
You try telling people this and they try to have you locked up