There are a lot of different color theories and color wheels. Personally, I like to think like a printer, as if all colors are made from a combination of yellow, magenta and cyan. It works for me in a practical way, not only theoretically but literally on my palette.
Primary colors
Up till the age of about 30 I always struggled with color mixing. Only when I learned about the cmyk system (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), very commonly used in print industry for ages, everything started to make sense.
With yellow and magenta you can mix all variations of orange biased yellows, oranges, red-orange and red.
With magenta and cyan you can mix reddish purple, purple violet and blue with a purple bias.
With cyan and yellow you can mix greenish blues, greens and green biased yellows.
Mix only two primaries for a vivid result
It really matters which kind of blue and yellow you mix. In the photo above you see that with cyan (or phthalo blue) and neutral yellow you can mix all variations of green in a vivid, saturated way. That's because only two real primaries are mixed.
If you mix only two primaries, you get a vivid result.
Below left: green mixed out of ultramarine blue and primary yellow. Ultramarine is slightly purple, so theoretically it contains cyan and magenta, so when mixed with yellow you mix three primaries and that makes for a muted green.
Below right: green mixed out of phthalo blue (a dark version of cyan) and primary yellow. Phthalo blue is a rather neutral blue, so when mixed with yellow, you only mix two primaries and that makes for a vivid green.
Since childhood I was taught that a purple kind of blue and a red like below were primaries. And when mixed they should make purple. Problem is, when I mixed them I got a muddy purple.
Later I learned, with the cmyk system, that the blue that I used in theory contains not only cyan, but a touch of magenta as well (because it's a purple biased blue).
I say in theory, because a tube of paint contains a pigment and that pigment just has a certain color. The blue color was ultramarine blue, and that is a certain pigment.
I also learned, that red isn't really a primary (when working with paint). When you mix magenta with a touch of yellow you get red. The red that I always thought was a primary, was a color that contained (theoretically) two primaries: magenta and yellow.
So, it makes sense that I couldn't mix a vivid purple. With the kind of blue and red that I was mixing, I was not mixing only two primaries, but three! Red (magenta + yellow) and blue with a purple bias (cyan + magenta).
Below you see the result, a muddy brownish purple. Nothing wrong with that color by the way, if it is what you need. But the point is: I wanted to make a vivid purple.
With magenta (below left) and cyan (below right) we're able to make vivid purple colors.
Every pigment is unique
In paints we deal with pigments (color particles in the paint) and every pigment behaves differently. So: with the three primaries yellow, magenta and cyan in theory we're able to mix all available colors (as shown above).
But... there are colors that you can buy that have specific pigments with certain characteristics that might be useful. Cadmium red is a very opaque pigment for instance. A mixture of magenta and yellow makes red, but this is a transparant red, because both these pigments are transparant.
Another example are pigments that are so intensly vibrant that you cannot reach the same result by mixing true primaries.
And there are a lot more specifics. Therefore it's not always handy to only use true primary yellow, magenta and cyan.
Often we don't need vivid colors
Also, a lot of times in realistic painting we don't even need vivid mixtures. Let's say you need a muddy green (as is often the case) and you mix primary yellow and cyan, you get a way too vivid green. In the photo below is an example. The greens that I need to mix are nowhere near as green as that bright green in the circle.
So then it's handy to mix for instance a purple kind of blue with yellow (in fact the colors that as a child I was taught were primaries), because then you get a muddy green that you need instantly! Of course you can also mix phthalo blue with yellow, then you get a vivid green and you can add the third primary (magenta) to dull it down.
You don't necessarily need to buy only the primaries! The whole point is, if you understand the system of cmyk, then you know why things happen the way they happen.
A lot of artists use two colors per primary. For yellow they use a neutral and an orange biased yellow, a neutral kind of red and magenta (or something similar like crimson) and ultramarine blue (purple bias) and phthalo (relatively neutral and/or green bias).
With these two variations per color, you always have the choice:
- mix two colors that are biased towards eachother and you'll get a vivid mixture. For example: ultramarine blue (purple bias) with magenta gives a vivid purple, because only two primaries are mixed.
- mix two colors that are not biased towards eachother and you'll get a muted result. For example: ultramarine blue (purple bias) with cadmium yellow light gives a muted green, because in this case three primaries are mixed.
Thinking like a printer (CMYK)
When you understand the system, look at the picture below and see how you can think of the colors you see.
- this yellow has an orange bias, so it theoretically contains yellow and magenta.
- this blue has a green bias, so it theoretically contains cyan and a touch of yellow.
- The purple is more towards the magenta side, so it contains cyan and magenta.
Predict what happens
Also when you know this system, you can predict what happens if I mix the colors shown below:
Indeed, we get a vivid orange, because I mixed red (in theory containing magenta and yellow) and an orange biased yellow (containing yellow and magenta), so only two primaries get mixed, providing for a vivid secondary color.
We don't need the perfect color wheel
When painting we work with pigments and not everything can be exactly fitted into a kind of simple color wheel as we know it. But... that isn't really necassery to begin with.
A simple color wheel with just all colors on it is enough. The only thing we need to know is the global position of colors relatively to each other. For instance: it is useful to know that yellow has a neutral state or it can have either a green bias or an orange bias, due to the neighbouring colors.
So, a color wheel like the one above is fine. It isn't perfect, but we can see the relations of the colors and we can get an indication of the complementaries etc.
Color wheels like below are also great, this is based on cmyk. It's a bit more to my liking, but still it is theory. It's useful for a glance at color relationships.
Below is a color wheel that I quickly made myself. The only thing it does really good, is show that I can mix every possible color with yellow, magenta and cyan.
But for the rest: I cannot be exactly sure where every color needs to be. For instance I recently read a theory that there should be more variations of green on the wheel in comparison to oranges, so there you go again. From experience I feel that this should be correct and on the color wheels above I also see a wider range of greens than oranges.
I'm not a scientist and even scientists don't agree. So in the end: who cares! You can see for yourself, that thinking in terms of yellow, magenta and cyan works, even if you don't use these exact pigments!
Complementary colors
On a simple color wheel you can also get an indication of the complementary colors. In the case of yellow you see purple kind of colors at the opposite side.
However, it matters which kind of yellow gets mixed with which kind of purple. So, that's just a matter of finding out on your palette.
If you want to dull down yellow in a rather neutral way, you mix it with a bit of purple and first check what happens. If the yellow turns a bit too much brown, than the purple was slightly too much to the red side.
If the yellow got too green, then the purple was too much to the blue side. You could also just say: the balance between the three primaries wasn't totally acurate.
When you mix complementary colors, in fact you are just mixing three primaries in a certain balance. Whenever you mix three primaries you won't get a vivid mixture, you get a dulled down mixture. And when you balance it perfectly, you get grey.
Conclusion
This way of thinking helped me a lot and I've seen great results with students when they learned to look at color mixing this way.
I call it color thinking like a printer, because printers build pictures with yellow, magenta, cyan and black.
Enjoy painting!👍👍
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