Who knew that color could create so much
controversy when it comes to mixing bright colors,
many artists are coming to realize
that traditional color theory just doesn't work.
Red, blue and yellow are not the best primary colors to make every other color.
So in today's video,
we are talking all things color theory and answering the question which color
wheel is correct and which is the right one to use?
I love color, and if you've seen my previous videos,
I often talk about choosing colors that work well together and using
the color wheel to find the best color harmonies.
In fact, I have a whole video about it right here.
But as I expected, my video did not come without criticism almost immediately
because I was apparently using the wrong color wheel. Before filming that video
I did some research and I uncovered a huge
controversy in the art world that I knew I would have to address as more people watch
my video, the red, blue, yellow versus the cyan, yellow, magenta debate.
And in that video, I promised that I would
talk more about the other color wheels in a future video,
so here we are, because here's the thing.
You can't actually create a bright pink or a magenta with these colors.
You can't create a vibrant green.
And by mixing a traditional yellow and blue and red, blue and yellow are not
the best primary colors to make every other color.
You might be wondering why I still teach using this color wheel and this color
theory for color harmonies and color combinations.
And I'll get into all of that throughout this video.
There's a little bit of science
and history to get into, but as usual, I'll try to keep this simple and I'll
include some extra resources in my blog post in the description below,
if you'd like to research this further for yourself.
So first, what is the whole point of all this?
Why do we even have color theory?
The purpose of any of these color wheels is firstly to help us choose colors
that work well together in color schemes and color palettes for design,
in patterns, in paintings, in interior design and so on.
It's also to help us understand relationships between colors and to help
us understand how colors mixed together to create new colors.
In short, it's to help us make better art. The main argument that arises in this
debate usually comes down to the difference between two main wheels
in particular, the traditional red, blue and yellow color wheel versus
the modern cyan, magenta and yellow color wheel.
But it is just not that simple.
And that's why I wanted to take this
chance to go a little more in depth with you in the history of these wheels
and why they are both important and relevant.
Let's start by looking at the traditional
color wheel, the one that you're probably already familiar with from school,
and that I used in my previous video about choosing colors that work well together.
We are taught in school that the primary colors are red, blue and yellow.
When mixed together,
these make the secondary colors green, orange and purple or violet.
Take it a step further and you'll get
the tertiary colors yellow-green, red-orange and so on.
People have been trying to make sense of colors for hundreds of years.
When Isaac Newton first released his
theories about color and light in the seventeen hundreds,
it wasn't completely scientifically accurate to what we know to date,
but it was the first time someone had taken such a big leap in color theory.
It was his groundbreaking experiments that showed us that prisms could
disassemble and reassemble white light into a full spectrum of colors.
Newton's color wheel
was actually originally based on light, not paint,
but it was adapted by the art world and became an incredibly popular tool
by artists and teachers in helping us to understand how colors work together.
Our understanding of color has changed
a lot over history, with the inventions of television,
photography, color printing and more scientific research into color,
red, yellow and blue are no longer considered the best primary colors to create
the largest range of colors in light, paint or ink.
And yet they are still the main
primary colors taught in just about every school worldwide.
So let's take a look at this for ourselves.
Have you ever tried using a set of paints
that only included these primary colors plus a black and white?
It's impossible to create a bright green
or a hot pink and some of the other colors as well.
In fact, many kids sets include green as an extra paint color because it's impossible
to mix a nice green with the blue and yellow that they include.
This is not a new concept, by the way.
Back in the nineteen hundreds,
Albert Munsell published a book saying that the notion of red,
yellow and blue as Primary Colors was a widely accepted error.
You sit on a throne of lies.
It's OK. Your childhood education was not a lie.
It just wasn't the complete picture.
Let me explain in a moment.
But first, let's look at the alternative
color wheels that have entered the color theory debate.
Introducing RGB and CMY. These two color wheels work hand in hand.
RGB is an additive color model used to mix
light, whereas CMY is a subtractive color model used to mix pigments or dyes.
They are essentially
opposites, the primary colors of one wheel are the secondary colors of the other,
the additive primary colors are red, green and blue.
Mixing these lights together can make a huge range of colors.
The subtractive primary colors are cyan, magenta and yellow.
Mixing these pigments together can make an even bigger and brighter range of colors
than the traditional red, yellow and blue primary colors.
If the terms RGB or CMY or CMYK seem
familiar, it's probably because computers and TVs use red, green and blue lights
to display the colors on your screen and your printer uses cyan, magenta
and yellow ink to print colors along with a black toner or ink,
which is the 'K' in CMYK, 'K' standing for key printing plate.
Red, yellow and blue cannot make nearly as many colors as cyan, magenta and yellow.
You can't make cyan or magenta with any combination of red, yellow and blue.
But you can make red, yellow and blue with cyan, yellow and magenta.
So what are some of the other color theories?
We also have psychological primaries,
the natural color system and imaginary primaries.
Yes, a real thing,
back to that shortly.
And all of these theories come
with different approaches, different diagrams and different primary colors.
The thing about the different color wheels
is just because there are multiple color wheels doesn't necessarily mean that one
is strictly right and one is strictly wrong.
I've been told that red,
yellow and blue can't possibly be correct because red is not a primary color,
because you can make red from yellow and magenta, which is true, by the way.
You can.
But what is the definition of a primary color?
Because a lot of this fuss is caused because people define a primary color as
being a color unable to be made from any other color.
But this is not how the dictionary defines a primary color, at least not anymore.
The current definition is that I primary color is any of a group of colors
from which all other colors can be obtained by mixing.
So can red, blue and yellow, along with black and white make every color?
Well, yes, sort of, but not really well.
Red, yellow and blue cannot make nearly as many colors as cyan, magenta and yellow.
But cyan, magenta and yellow aren't the perfect solution either.
I... I, I don't understand.
The CMYK your printer uses was designed as the most economical way to produce a wide range
of colors for printing, but it technically still can't produce every color.
It is not the best at vibrant purples
and you can actually produce a better orange with the red, yellow, blue model.
In fact, Pantone created a hexachrome
printing ink system that could print brighter and clearer pictures by adding
orange and green inks to make CMYKOG,
this produced far better skin tones and pastels and was able to better
recreate the colors that you see on your screen.
It was discontinued in 2008, but there are similar six color processes
already used by other printers and I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing
more of these in mainstream printers as technology improves and costs come down.
Then we have those imaginary primaries.
Who let maths get involved?
I Googled this, and the Wikipedia page was
literally titled 'Impossible Color', so to oversimplify this
and an embarrassing non-mathematical way, imaginary primaries are hypothetical
colors that humans are incapable of seeing.
The CIE1931 color system
was created to capture the full gamut of colors that humans can see.
And because this range of colors actually
ranges on a curve rather than a flat edge, don't even ask me about the math here.
It's impossible to choose any number
of primary colors within the gamut of colors that would mix to create every
color that we can see. Here is the problem with every other system that exists
and why the only solution is to create imaginary primaries.
For real, mathematically, choosing colors outside
the gamut is the only way to choose colors that would actually mix to create all
the colors in the middle, and those colors just don't exist.
My brain just.
Can't even.
We still don't seem to have a perfect one size fits all system because color is
complex and maybe it's something we'll never fully understand.
Here's the problem with all of these theories.
Color isn't circular at all.
It doesn't fit in a convenient wheel when
you consider the color is actually wavelengths of light and that we can only
see a small section of a huge spectrum of these waves.
It's impressive that we've even been able to map it out as well as we have.
Just because I have to get this out of my head and I can't not talk about it.
Did you know that Magenta doesn't actually have a wavelength at all?
So technically it doesn't exist.
There's no pink in the rainbow.
Your eyes are making it up.
It is a figment of your imagination.
A pigment of your imagination.
Shane, is it cruel to just throw that out there and not give the science behind it?
Yes,
we don't have time. It's OK.
OK, I'll put it in the blog
I'll put it in the blog.
It's beyond comprehension that we've been able to create any kind of system or
theory to recreate and organize these colors in lights and inks,
in paints and pencils that are accessible to us to use and create art with,
and that somehow we can actually recreate what we see on the paper in front of us.
Honestly, it's mind boggling and humbling
that we even have the tools to unlock such creativity.
But before we get lost on a whole
different rabbit hole, let's come back to the main point of this video.
Which color will should you use and should we use?
And should we be teaching our kids cyan, yellow and magenta instead of red, blue and yellow?
The whole point of any color system is to make these colors more accessible.
Color is complicated beyond what we can
possibly comprehend, but creating these color wheels and color
systems can help us to make sense of how colors work to a point that we can even
learn to mix and make our own colors in our art.
For this purpose, we shouldn't discard any of these color systems.
Instead, we should use them as a guide to experiment and create.
Let's think about our CMY vs RYB debate,
when it comes to first teaching kids the different colors.
Magenta and cyan are very specific
colors, whereas red and blue can be conceptual colors.
By that I mean they can refer to a broader
category of colors that are easily taught and understood in society.
We can teach kids the sky is blue, the grass is green,
the dog is brown without getting into specific shades or hues.
The word blue can include cerulean, navy
blue, azure, indigo, ultramarine, baby, blue, royal blue and the list goes on.
We don't teach kids how to identify these individual colors.
In fact, many adults probably wouldn't be able to identify half of these colors as
even falling into the blue category unless they were interested in art.
Most companies don't even use the same names for colors anymore.
In fact, I had quite the challenge trying
to identify some strange color names in one of my older videos.
Our five year old son very specifically
tells us that the color of the sky is cyan and it's not something I taught him.
But I am a little bit proud.
But that's not normal for a five year old. When it comes to teaching colors to kids,
we teach in general color groups, not specifics.
So it makes sense that we would use a simplified color wheel instead
of a color wheel that relies on specific colors like magenta and cyan.
And the traditional color wheel still
meets the basic needs to teach kids how to mix colors and how colors work together.
Well, it won't produce the best
green, yellow and blue do make green.
And it's a much simpler concept for kids to learn because it works
from the psychological primaries, which I haven't had time to go into today.
But you can find more about them in the sources on my blog.
But maybe the same CMY subtractive wheel should be taught earlier in school.
It's a shame that some art students aren't
even learning this better method for mixing colors in university.
I never even realized it was an alternative wheel until recently.
And it makes a lot of sense to use cyan and magenta instead of red and blue if you
really want to mix a bigger and brighter range of colors,
after all, that's what I printers use.
But then we're not teaching kids about mixing light either.
And kids are using screens far more than traditional mediums now.
So what age should we introduce them to RGB?
So in summary, which color wheel should
you use? When it comes to mixing paints or pencils,
the CMY wheel does produce a better range of colors.
If you're working on a screen,
computer or with lights, the RGB is the right color wheel.
But when it comes to choosing colors
that work well together, or if you're a beginner and trying to just
find somewhere to start, personally, I still prefer the traditional color wheel.
I've looked at each of the color harmony
rules when applied to the CMY wheel and they still work,
but I feel that throwing the traditional
color wheel out the window is actually a mistake here.
The color harmonies still work on the CMY wheel, but I just feel the harmonies
on the traditional wheel look better and more cohesive.
But here's the thing about art.
It's all about perception,
experience and improvization. Art is ultimately an expression of freedom,
and there are no rules that say you have to follow or agree with any particular
color theory or system in order to be an artist.
Colors are fascinating and the science behind them absolutely blows my mind.
But instead of letting these theories
dictate the rules of creativity, we can use all of this as
a starting point and a guide to answering questions about color and give us
a framework to understanding how colors work well together.
The true primary colors have been a debate
between artists, scientists, philosophers and professors for centuries.
So we can get caught up in the debate or
we can choose to use what we already know and love color for what it is.
All of these theories, all of these ideas are supposed to help us experience color.
So let's do that, and let's just create. Obviously this is
just a small piece of the massive puzzle that scientists, philosophers,
artists and mathematicians have been trying to understand for years.
So I am certainly not going to have presented the whole story in perfect
accuracy, but I would love to hear your comments anyway.
And I have included all of this in a written version with lots of pictures
on my blog, which you can find in the description
below, along with links to the sources I use for my own research.
If you would like to learn more about
color theory or go in depth into the science side of color.
If you found this video helpful, please subscribe for more videos about
art, color and choosing colors that work well together.
And remember to check out my website below
for some other great resources to help you choose colors in your creative work.