

All of these colors are secondary colors created by using the effects of visible light and not pigments. When you combine green and red you create yellow, or mixing blue and red you create magenta, and combining green and blue you create cyan. In this case, the three primary colors you use are green, blue, and red (RGB). This can be seen from the display on your cell phone or your television screen. However, visible light is another means whereby you can create secondary colors. The three primary colors red, blue, and yellow create the secondary colors of green, purple, and orange through the blending of these color pigments.įrom the information above, we have seen that you can create secondary colors using pigments. You can do this by making it lighter or darker and adding black, gray, or white. When mixing primary colors it is important to take an equal amount of both colors, creating a pure hue that you can then alter. These colors including green, purple, and orange are all secondary colors. To create purple, you blend red and blue, or to create orange, you blend red and yellow. For example, you take two of the primary colors like blue and yellow then combine them to create the color green. The basis of creating secondary colors for the artist using paint pigments is to start with the three primary colors red, yellow, and blue first. So, how do you create secondary colors? For the artist working with paint pigments, the secondary colors are green, purple, and orange, while for the designer working with the light spectrum, magenta, yellow and cyan are the secondary color, and all other colors are derived from them.Ĭreating Secondary Colors From Paint Pigments Unlike primary colors that cannot be created as they are pure colors, secondary colors need to be created. Just like the artist can mix any color or shade by adding other colors to the primary colors red, yellow, and blue, so can the computer create different shades of red, green, and blue.

The designer, on the other hand working with the digital medium, makes use of the RGB model as those colors are picked up by the photoreceptors of your eyes. A painting artist uses the RYB palette because it illustrates better the association or link that the physical colors have with each other in the paint mixing process. They are the building blocks for any other color you can think of. Let us now consider these terms in more detail below.įor the artist working with paint pigments, the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue (RYB), while for the designer working with the light spectrum, the primary colors are red, green, and blue (RGB), and all other colors are derived from these primary colors. This is because colors get darker when mixing color pigments, while mixing light, the colors get lighter.

When it comes to computer graphics and light, you work with the additive color model. Artists will deal with pigments using the subtractive color model, where you have a set of primary colors from which you can create the secondary colors.
