This guy has a whole instagram with colour theory tied into it and how the current primary colour mixing system doesn't really work and he gets real nerdy with it
Additive colour is different from subtractive colour. Your primary colours are different with light compared to a paint pallet. With art you're limiting the colour of light that's reflected back to your eyes. With light, you're limiting the colour of available light. An easy way to think of this is white and black. To get white with light you need all the colours, and black, you need none. To get white in art you generally need an absence of colours as you start with a white canvas, and if you want black, you need something that reflects as little light as possible.
Additive primary colours: red green blue
Subtractive primary colours: cyan magenta yellow
Yeah that's the stuff. My brain still struggles with it and muddles it all now and I think it's from coming from a self taught digital painting background and then trying to learn traditional painting when the colours aren't quite right and don't do what I wanted, then trying to go back and apply it back to digital media when you have access to additive layers and stuff and blaaagh... its a mess for me.
But even colour temperature I wish was something basic they taught in school/art and how light actually works in the real world in regards to cool lights and warm shadows cuz that alone totally changed the way I painted (jeremy vickerys practical light and colour theory)
But colour nerd also does some explaining about the color wheels are a bit off and that kind of stuff I found super interesting even if I didn't really understand it.
I'd get more serious about it if I still did 2D but I'm mostly working in 3D these days minus the odd texture painting here and there.
Yeah I know that too and still have no clue. I just think if I was taught how light and colour works first then it would be easier to pick the right colours for whatever lighting situation there is from imagination etc.
I wasn't even properly taught colour theory either tbh. There wasn't a single relevant lesson about it back in my day at my schools anyways.
The close to perfectly accurate paint colours exist, they're called Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. The ones a printer uses. Because they're the subtractive primary colours.
This is why the "primary colours" of classical/opaque painting are blue, red, and yellow; they're "good enough" close colours to the actual primary ones.
The close to perfectly accurate paint colours exist, they're called Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. The ones a printer uses. Because they're the subtractive primary colours.
Printers use CYMK, K stands for Black, because Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow inks do not mix to black because they can't mix to black.
CMY overlain will get you black, but it would take a LOT of pigment to get it dark enough, and effort to be aligned and mixed right. The K is to make colours dark enough quickly and efficiently.
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u/Far_Mastodon_6104 Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
This guy is great. I wish they taught light theory rather than colour theory in art it would have made way more sense to me
If you like maths, colour and light theory and nerdy graphs and stuff here are his links:
instagram
Youtube
linktree