My dad was a professional printer throughout his career and he taught me that the true primary colours are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. These three, plus black, are the standard inks used in colour printing. There are no other pigments you can mix to get any of these three. You can mix them to get red (magenta + yellow) and blue (cyan + magenta), and green (cyan + yellow) - which are themselves the three primary colours of light.
That's the CMYK model and is used in printing :D The RYB model is outdated but is the one taught in schools The RGB model is an additive model, while CMYK is subtractive If I remember correctly, additive colours are from luminiant things, such as digital screens, which is why the RGB model is used by digital artists, while subtractive colours mix together with things like ink; they don't produce their own light So RGB and CMYK are both primary colour models, just differing in their use :D
As an art student in the early 1980s, color theory exercises were done with W&N gouache in cyan, magenta, primrose (yellow), a neutral black and a neutral white. We mixed everything as mixtures mostly, but the color palette simulated printer inks on a white page.
When I was in art school my design teacher taught us colour theory (CMYK) and light theory (RGB). Magenta isn’t in the rainbow because the rainbow is light, but you can actually mix red from magenta and yellow because that’s colour. Soooo cool!
Yes! True primaries cannot be mixed from other colors but thou can mix red and blue. It takes a bit to wrap your mind around it but once you do, the fun begins!
The reason why it's not in the rainbow is because the eye's color receptors that perceive red and blue cover wavelength ranges that do not exclusively overlap each other.
@@nysaea yeah the HUMAN eye. apparently like certain insects have more color receptors than we do to perceive more colors and honestly i think about that. also that cats and dogs see less. so weird
@@imsunnybaby Not only insects (which are another can of worms) but most birds and fish are tetrachromatic as well and can see UVs, and there are also animals with a monochromatic set of photoreceptors like snails. Never mind the mantis shrimp that has 12 types. But arent' we talkign about art here?
Quick tip: CMYK is great for people who love bright, unnatural color palettes for their art pieces. RYB is great for more natural subjects like landscapes, portraits etc. My style definitely a mixture of both so I always use a split primary palette in every medium I use. Obviously this is not a RULE it was just helpful for me when I was first starting to pick colors.
@katriannam sorry! I don't often recheck my comments since people usually don't ask me stuff lol. CMY - Cyan (or even pthalo blue green shade or W&N aqua green, for slightly muted mixes/shadows), quin magenta & a cool yellow like lemon yellow or benzimdazolone yellow, which is slightly warmer than lemon. I use the latter in watercolor, but usually lemon in other mediums. RYB - in watercolor, DS' quin red or quin coral, diarylide yellow (warm yellow) and pthalo blue. Hope this helps or that you found your answer long before I responded 😊
As someone who worked with 35mm film back in the day: The yellow works because it's the inverse of blue. That is, if you take a picture of something blue, that color will show up as a yellow on your negative film. Red, Green, Blue are the primary colors of light, and mixed together they form white. Because light is additive. If you take one of the colors out of the mix you get the inverse of that color. Remove red and you get cyan, remove green and you get magenta, remove blue and you get yellow. (Yes, Red and Green light mixes to yellow). Remove all the colors and you get the inverse of white: Black. This is why Cyan, Magenta and Yellow make for a much better set of colors for painting, because they do in fact add together correctly to create the other colors. Red and Magenta, as well as cyan and blue are very similar colors though, so I understand where the confusion comes from. I also assume those three colors have historically been easier to make than cyan and magenta.
@8 bit synth When did I say yellow is the complementary color of blue? Inverses aren't the complementary colors. That said Cyan is a type of bluish color, which invers to red. Red and yellow mixes to orange. Which is why orange is a more pleasing complementary color to bluish tones, because bluish colors sit between cyan and blue, so the complementary sits best between yellow and red.
No they don't. You can't create what most people call a true red with Magenta and Yellow nor a pure orange. We just don't care much about those colors. Cyan is blue. Blue is a color category. You can't make a cobalt blue or an aquamarine blue with cyan blue. Mixing light and mixing pigment are not at all the same thing.
@@giseletheriault8633 The reason they don't mix as you argue is due to pigment density. (Did you even watch the video?) Cyan isn't blue, look at a color wheel. There used to be a time when people would say orange was a type of red, or yellow, depending on the hue. And yet today we consider orange it's own color. Cyan isn't blue. And sure mixing light and mixing pigment isn't the same thing. But the right pigments to mix in order to mix color correctly are cyan magenta and yellow. Why do you think printers and printing presses uses exactly those colors?
@@TheAurgelmir "Blue" is a color category. "Cyan" is not a color category. There is only one cyan. There are many blues. In the context of teaching children or lay people colors we are referring to categories not specifics. I don't know what you mean by "mix color correctly". CYM doesn't mix all colors accurately. It still creates versions of them. You will not achieve the clarity and saturation of cadmium orange or red by mixing yellow and magenta.
❤ you cannot possibly know the impact of your gift and willingness to share it ❤ before a near fatal assault that resulted in a TBI I had a life, career and most of all love of painting. 11 years now...I couldn't do it. couldn't remember the technique. the joy. just couldn't get there. today Christmas morning...my kids are in different places in the US and alone I was honestly feeling despair...but still had drawers of paper, brushes and unopened watercolors that I used to love. some how your video came up on a random link on Google. I came to just peek...."KNOWING" it was still pointless. hmmm...my heart is on fire. my spirit is glowing. I cannot wait to get everything out that I've hoarded for years hoping that someday I'd remember how to paint.. recapture the joy of color and sharing it. I have no words to thank you * you're right. you were put here to teach watercolors. and at the risk of being over dramatic, I'd go further and say, for me...perhaps to save my life. I'm not alone anymore today, Christmas day, I am painting. bless you little one...I'll be here watching as much as I can, as often as I can (I can no longer work bc of brain injury from asphyxiation) so I can once again share the beauty you've grasped and brought back to life. MERRY CHRISTMAS and an unbelievable NEW YEAR 🎉❤
I’m in tears reading and re-rereading your comment. Your heart is on fire. Oohhh what a gift that is to me! But let it be your gift too. Every brushstroke is momentum, no matter how small, awkward or ugly it may be. You are most definitely not alone. So glad you found this community
@KristyRice thank you so much for your encouragement and support ❤️ I am slowly, but delightfully trying each tiny step, one by one, thrilled to see the colors rolling across my paper again. no "objects" yet, but I am excited nonetheless. my TBI unfortunately keeps me quite self protective and introverted (I had many years as the wild child!) but please know I am here, learning and so very grateful. I'll check in but am just loving my world of watercolors again. ♥︎
I studied this at design school. It's about how colors reflect light and mix together, by addition or subtraction. When you take the colors as light, basically electromagnetic waves, you can obtain any color by mixing red, green and blue (RGB) light sources. These are mixed by addition. And if you mix them all, you get white light. When using pigments, the real primary colors are cyan magenta and yellow. They are mixed by subtraction of light reflection. If you mix them all, you get a desaturated muddy color. I hope I was clear and accurate enough. Have a lovely day
Absolutely. Appreciate it. The video was meant to scratch the surface in an approachable way. Although I’m happy to have a comments section bursting with so much science :)
That is when using light, not pigments. If what you were saying were true printers would use just those pigments. High end printing of artwork or even photographs use more pigments. Even house paint uses 9 to 12 pigments.
I didn't expect magenta to be the golden colour at the end lol I just picked up Quinacridone Red acrylic, at first I was like ew this is too pink for me, I wanted something more warm. Until I mixed it with blue and holy moly! You're right! Magenta does make a fantastic purple!
Once I read the book of Michael Wilcox named “Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green”. That was a game changer!!!! The best explanation of a color theory to me at least!!! So structured and well explained. I work in a fashion industry and that knowledge of color helps a lot to work with colors especially when it comes to the combo with a person’s natural palette, when ppl are convinced that some colors don’t work for them.
You are a very good instructor. Easy to follow and clear in your way to communicate your concepts. This is one of the best explanations of color theory. You make it easy and entertaining. Great job, Kristy!
A split complementary would be choosing the two colors adjacent to the compliment. For violet and the compliment yellow, a split comp would be violet, yellow-orange and yellow-green. For yellow with a compliment of violet, the colors would be yellow, red-violet and blue-violet.
I love that you painted the same thing over and over for this exercise! I just got some new paints today so this is what im going to do in my studio tuday!
I wish I were here! I’m a very realistic artist and I have a hard time trying to figure out what colors to replace them with instead to do more expressive artwork.
9:40 > Why the makes sense. From a color theory perspective IS a slight outlier. It is sorta similar to the warm green that flanks the page. If I were painting, I would totally use that green as a shading color for that yellow. From a composition perspective is where things get interesting as the composition is doing a diagonal symmetry thing. So the yellow is the only thing in this composition that's unpaired and doesn't have a compliment, it also right on the line of symmetry and the focal point of the piece. Putting the only color that isn't paired feels... intentional.
I've been coloring my drawings by instinct for over 50 years now----my mother was a locally well known artist, and she taught me the color wheel and color theory, but she rarely used either. She created her works from her imagination, and her weavings were incredibly gorgeous pieces that were exquisite works of art in their own right. She started out in oils, but after about 20 years of that, switched to weaving and to quilt making, and there was no stopping her once she began dying all her own yarns for her woven pieces! While I don't sew, nor do I weave, I LOVE to draw and to color the drawings, and do so prolifically, and to my own satisfaction.
I know your comment is from months ago. Your Mother sounds like a wonderful and very creative woman. Do you still have her weavings? Or any of her quilts? If you do, I am so incredibly jealous of you!! That is very special.
The Paint box poster. The reason the yellow shirt works is because this picture is every single color scheme at once. Along the edges there is a complementary pink/green border. The figure is wearing a triatic color scheme of orange/blue/yellow while also sporting a secondary-triatic color scheme (Two secondary and one primary color) of orange/yellow/green. As your eye moves through the picture you spot the artist pallet. The pallet is a hidden tetradic. The paints on the pallet even have that 'dirty-cold-margin area' you talked about earlier. Each one of the colors on that pallet will be a complementary to at least one or more color throughout the entire piece.
This is a wonderful way to encounter color, exploring the liminal spaces!!!!! I appreciate your videos, and respect the time and talent it takes to make these life changing moments for us. I am such a nontraditional artist, I love your philosophy. I have some intuitive sense of color, but have been curious as to why I can't get the feeling I want when I mix my own watercolors in my small travel kit. Now I know why!!!! I have ALWAYS loved Magenta and Cyan. Permission to use them has now been granted-YEA. I was looking for a color theory class, but now I think I will take your advice and play with the combinations first. and figure out the best and most fun ways to invite more cyan and magenta to the party. BTW, my apartment is in an old Victorian that is painted Purple ,Green, and Yellow-Orange. It was one of my main reasons for living here! Thank you so very much.
Baby steps is very good advice. I tried to be a really good artist too early on and started losing confidence. Now I sketch and paint a little bit everyday and copied other work which helped me learn and now I’m just using my imagination and photos and from other little exercises I’ve done I’m starting to get better more than I thought I could be.
Working with Colour is legit like a nightmare to me, but when it’s explained like this, and the cyan magenta yellow thing... you’re amazing! Thank you! I can’t lie Colour theory is scary especially when I see it explained so rigidly so I gave up on understanding but now I want to go draw ❤️
What a wonderful video, for some reason it all clicked within me after rebelling against the concept of color theory for such a long time. I was finding it boring but now I feel like a whole world of joy, experiment and wonder has opened up to me! Your split complementary is gorgeous. What you did is actually a split complementary with the 2 complementary colours being 2 steps away from the direct complementary instead of 2 and what blows my mind is that it works too! I tried this with other combos and it works so well! Imagine the possibilities wow mind blown!!
This video is just what I needed! Omg just getting into watercolor painting and colors (seriously) for the first time and it’s been kinda overwhelming. This video makes using and understanding color theory really easy for beginners like me! Thanks so much
For complementary (commonly misspelled as complimentary), think "to complete". Helps in the spelling, but also helps define the word. Pairs of complementary colors "complete" the color wheel. Take for instance yellow and violet. Yellow brings in yellow and violet brings in red and blue. All three primaries are represented by the pair of complements.
I did a great deal of rughooking and made custom rugs for family and friends. I reverse-engineered Warhol's work and realized that he used triadic and tetratic combos, and used them myself, to great effect! ETA I know why the yellow works, it ties in the primary colour of blue with the green, which of course is yellow and blue. Easy peasy ;-)
Thanks for sharing this beautiful video! It was super fun watching your video and really motivating and inspirational! Keep creating amazing art videos! Love what you're doing!! Gonna go watch the next one!
There are there are three sets of primary colors, primary meaning the colors you mix all other colors from: red/yellow/blue for pigment, magenta/yellow/cyan for printing, and red/green/blue for light. (Look at individual pixels on a tv for that one.)
Yes, and I think it's rather unfortunate that we teach kids about primary colors, but use the least primary like of the options.While it does allow you to make brown, which is completely impossible with RGB, it also leads to confusing things like being able to make a primary out of a secondary and primary color which doesn't work out so well in either of the other systems.
There is no distinction to be made between pigments and printing. What do you think we print with? The RYB set as primaries was made back when it was the best available option, before we could produce cyan and magenta pigments, which are much closer approximations to true primary colors. It just stuck for historical reasons, but makes little sense with today's pigment technology.
@@Window4503 To be fair, a well chosen RYB palette can be a great choice for artistical reasons, they can make lovely muted hues. Teaching it to kids as a primaries palette is what I have a problem with. I've just read too many comments of people who had their confidence in art shattered because they couldn't mix bright secondaries and they thought they were just terrible at it and had no business pursuing art. It's just heartbreaking.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade The RGB additive system also allows you to make brown. You may just be confused as to what brown is: ua-cam.com/video/wh4aWZRtTwU/v-deo.html
Thank you for a very good explanation that makes it practical and simplified so color theory is loose to be a part of the artwork to enhance it and "blend" with the whole piece. Color should be experimental instead of boxed in.
You are one awesome teacher. I know what colors please me, but I am not an artist. I just like to play. I’ve been over color theory many times and my eyes glaze over rather quickly but I keep coming back. I will surely learn something when I next play and watch your video again! Thanks for a very cool lesson. 😀
@@KristyRice That would be in abstract painting that I go crazy with the colors. But I did study color theory in college. I enjoyed the class. It was pretty technical. I'm good that way, even enjoyed studying perspective, which scares some art students. Faber Birren has great books on color theory. I lean towards recognizing 4 primary colors. Each primary has a primary opposite. You are very good with the brush. I believe you have done some sign lettering. The craft of hand lettering is being lost due to the computerized cutting of vinyl letters. I worked painting signs. I never mastered the hand lettering. The shop used me mostly for artsy signs, and carving wood signs. That was 40 years ago. The son inherited the business and he'll still call me sometimes to come and carve a sign, or paint something. I painted a rooster on a restaurant sign for him recently. He likes the way I can just do it. Good wishes to you, my fellow painter.
YES! I began painting traditional rosemaling almost 50 years ago and that has a very specific color palette. Green was made with ivory black and cad yellow. Ugh! There was no purple and no pink, because those are more modern colors. Imagine my joy when i bought a few more colors and started mixing on my own! Fast forward 20 years and people actually wrote books on the real basic triad! I think inkjet printers had helped the comprehension of that but not The practice in art making. The real problem has been lightfastness or the lack of it. The auto industry discovered things in the 1950s that brought us pink Cadalacs and turquoise Chevys. And that changed our paint boxes. With all the excitement about lightfastness, i still don't understand why people still insist on using Opera and the traditional alizirin crimson. There is no perfect replacement, but still! Even when just decorating notes to distant nephews and nieces, those may be kept for 100 years in scrapbooks... or at least that was what happened in my family.
There used to be serious issues with light fastness of paints in olden times, which is a shame as many of the older paintings looked absolutely stunning before the colors faded. And there's a bunch of paintings that just don't look right unless you view them in person with the proper lighting.
I was so happy when you to add Magenta and Cyan to your palette. 1,000% agree and have been met with some backlash in online art communities over it... "CMY is for PRINT NOT PAINT! Waaaghhh!! " Dx ... If you want that sort of dirty look from classic paintings (like that 1940's-esque zoo painting you showed), by ALL means, use the classic color wheel. But if you want the pure 80's POP saturation of an eye-burning orange... USE MAGENTA AND CYAN!!
Years ago I wondered why some of the commercial illustrations were so unified and restful. What I discovered was that whatever colors they employed they would pick a single color to influence all the colors they used. For example add a little single blue to every color you use. If added to orange it begins to neutralize the contrast, add to red and it cools the color, etc., etc. Then moving up and down in grey scales adds rich transitions. The other portion was pigment palettes alizarin crimson vs. cadmium red., cadmium yellow vs. lemon yellow, The cadmium palette is warmer and the other cooler. Loomis is a good example of this color styling.
ah! i will try that color theory chart! thats something new i haven't done before. i have tried for many many years to understand color theory and only when i finally got a split complementary set and mixed my own colors did it actually sink in and stay in my brain.
Thanks for this! I've been relatively familiar with color theory(I took a class when I was younger), but this is the perfect refresher for me. I love the way you explain it! It feels so fun and inspiring!
Okay, as someone who was very interested colour(and is still very much fascinated by it), but is not a painter, I would like to add my own knowledge. (VERY LONG, plus replies) 1st. The Red-Yellow-Blue paints vs. CMYK thing exists because they are 2 very different systems. But they're also kinda the same. The red yellow and blue taught in schools is an example of a "subtractive" colour system, while the RGB lights on things like LEDs are an "additive" colour system. What this means is that, because paint as a medium is a physical substance, while colour is the light reflecting off on it, you're not really mixing light to make those new colours. What paint does is subtract all light that is not, say red, and reflects red light into your eyes. And when mixing blue into that, you reflect some red light from the red paint, some blue from the blue paint, and absorb other colours. The blue paint will absorb some of the red light that falls onto the overall mixture because it's not red, vice versa. So in the end, you get a paint mixture perceived as a mix of both red and blue, but also darker than the individual colours. And as you would see with paint, the more colours to that mixture you add, the darker and darker the paint will look to the point it's almost 100% black. Because there's so much light that's being absorbed and not reflected back, and black is the absence of light. Which leads into RGB: it's called additive for the same reason the other one is called subtractive; you are adding light. The three "primary colours of light" as it were, combine to make white light. And inversing that, mix red, green and blue together and you will get black. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the secondary colours for this system, and similarly made by combining two of the primaries. But the reason red, yellow, blue is used more than in schools than magenta, cyan, yellow, is actually just that: They are taught in schools. Since magenta and cyan are more complex, and because kinds with no knowledge would see no or only minor differences, they switched cyan and magenta for blue and red. It's just now the idea that has stuck because everyone was taught it from an impressionable age.
Another thing is that I really can't not point out the incorrect spellings/terminology: It is spelled "Monochromatic". It even did in to the auto-generated captions. It comes from mono- as in "one", and chroma, which is "colour". "Monochrimatic" is not a word. Same for "Triadic"; "Triatic" is apparently a nautical term. "Tetradic" I believe you got correct, but also not. To my knowledge/research, tetradic is a word used for both the "rectangle" configuration, and a "square" configuration. However, you mentioned that the colours you used "formed a rectangle", but also said that they were "equidistant form each other". They were not, that would have been a "square" configuration, which can be achieved by picking four colours that were each 2 colours apart on your wheel, but the spacings between your selected colours were either 1 or 3. "Complimentary" comes from "compliment", as in talking positively about something. "Complementary" on the other hand, is the correct spelling and means to pair well with something, that putting said things together will enhance or emphasize aspects of each other. This misspelling carried over to "split complementary" And speaking of split complementary, you chose violet as the base colour. And you then chose yellow-orange and blue-green. Which you did get wrong, because split complementary means the colour choice should have been yellow-green and not blue-green. I was also kinda confused because you even the edit pointed to yellow-green as a colour you used.
Lastly, please do not misinterpret this, I mean no ill intention. You even admitted you may have gotten it wrong, and that you were not particularly focused on getting it right. And I also think it is a very beautiful painting despite being an inaccurate example of that specific colour harmony. I intention was to inform and correct misinformation.
Oh, and 2 things I forgot to mention! 1. I really appreciated that whole thing about us placing metaphorical "fences" around the colours on the wheel. Light is a spectrum; there are a slew infinitely small degrees of colours in between the margins. The sections of the colour wheel are tools to help us understand that there exist colours within colours. The secondary colours are between two primary colours because that's was where they came from, the intersection of those primaries. The tertiaries are similarly, the space where the primary and secondary merged and melded. The goal should be to explore further and discover those in-betweens, not make more boxes. 2. You talked about how red and blue don't exactly make that bright purple you expected it to when you were a kid. And you're right! There is actually another model of the colour wheel and tried to fix that issue, called a "colour bias" wheel. It's essentially the colour wheel(typically without tertiaries though), that replace the primary-coloured segments with arrows, showing a specific or a few varieties that lean more toward one secondary colour, with another arrow for varieties that lean toward the other secondary colour the primary can make.
Thanks sooo very much for all the insight :) I had theory drilled into me in college but now I approach color from a more intuitive/emotional stance. Isn’t it all just incredibly fascinating??!!
No, magenta and cyan are absolutely not any more complex than red and blue, they just were not available as dyes or pigments back when people started theorizing color theory. RYB is only still taught because historical reasons and/or stubborn people, but new technolgy has made RYB obsolete as a primaries palette. They're still perfectly valid as a color palette, they're just terrible approximations to true primaries. CMY is a much closer fit. Plus, kids DO very much notice the difference. I've read countless comments on this kind of videos saying that back at school, they were always unable to create certain colors with their primaries and thought there was something wrong with them, and were led to believe that they're just bad at art and should give up. Bad primaries do actual damage to kids.
You have given me permission not to get hung up on colour and feel it more BUT I still think colour study and understanding is important as then you know why your painting isn't working .....TY ....I will be watching this again love from london 🇬🇧
you could say the red yellow blue sepia zoo tin art is monochromatic because in a sense theyre all warm colors. its warm orange/red warm yellow and a warm blue(towards greenish) so it has a "sepia" "faded" effect ""monotone"" in that sense
This was super helpful. I haven’t really painted since college, but when this video popped up on the side of the history video I was watching the title intrigued. I subscribed and am looking forward to watching more of your stuff when I’m not trying to get ready for work. You’ve already inspired me to want to dig out my old Windsor & Newton paints and random brushes!
Many Christmases ago I needed some money so I painted Christmas windows. I didn't want to spend much on paint so I bought red, blue, yellow, black and white. I mixed whatever other colors I needed. I still think these are the only colors I need but I do choose my triad of colors from the edges. Yep! Picking your pallet is an important part of the whole process.
Thanks for another great video! One does have to watch that magenta is light fast (if desirable), as colors like Opera are often not. Linking another artists video shows how much you care about art and helping your audience. Thank you - it was excellent. You are a prime example of how one person can make a positive difference in the lives of many.
Great video. I tend to operate on instinct with my colors. I pick a few and go to town and it usually "works" but I am bearing down on my technique these days, being more intentional, and learning some detail. This is a helpful video for that.
I think this might be my favorite painting video ever. In under 15 minutes, it gives all information I need for practical painting. With practical examples. A lot of color harmony examples are done in the abstract manner, and my novice brain just can't handle the translation into concrete painting yet. And if watched carefully, a ton of brush technique too. They don't teach color theory in school where I am from, so it was a gap in my knowledge for sure. I felt like my art comes out looking like a slightly depressed clown without it. So I started formally studying it this month. I am all for breaking rules, but I find it easier to do if I understand them first. This video goes on the permanent save for that exact purpose.
Here is a quick bit of colour theory on how to make bright colours and muted colours. If you want bright colors add all cool colors together. The cool colours are Hansa yellow Lt., phthalo blue G/S, and Q. Rose. These colours all lean towards the blue, and green side of the colour wheel. If you want the more muted colours add all warm colors together. The warm colours are Gamboge, Ultramarine, and Pyrrol Scarlet. These colours lean towards the red, and orange colours on the colour wheel. I think the perfect colour theory watercolour paint set is Daniel Smith's essential set. It has the colors I mentioned so it takes the stress out of what paints to choose for a good color theory mixing set.
This is exactly the video I needed to see. Thank you! I have been feeling so overwhelmed with color theory, especially when it comes to diving in to watercolors.
Don't let the "color theory" get to you...play with your colors. As you do, you'll see how they work (or don't work, lol) together. Like anything else, learning color play takes a bit of time. For some reason people often think they should just know this stuff (I've taught watercolor for years). My question is always "How often has it come up for you? Would you be frustrated with your lack of knowledge of blood types if you're not in the medical field? Or angry because you don't know how to rebuild the engine in your car--unless you've done it a thousand times?" Just starting something new is a big deal--good for you 🤗 You'll get there. This will all make sense in time--just keep at watercolor, keep moving forward and before you know it...it'll be second nature to you too.
When will someone talk about the actual pigments, as the color names change per brand. A color filled with different pigments reacts in mixing very differently than a color with a single pigment.
The easiest way to find the same pigment as another brand is to look at the pigment code on the back of the tube/jar. Like Cad med red by liquitex acrylic has PR9 & PR170 to make their cad med red. It's basically the chemical compound that makes up the paint it self. If that makes any sense? Also each red pigment per say can be cool and warm tone so depending if you mix it with a cool or warm yellow, it could make a whole new range of colours.
semufu9 answered your question, which.... yeah. i usually read the label on art supplies i buy, and try to keep a little notebook with some of my faves' pigment codes jotted down for future reference happy trails
That's one of the reasons why better brands will have a little test splotch on the tube. So, you know pretty precisely what the color is going to look like, even if there is some variation between batches.
I am pretty new to watercolor and just feeling like I am getting it, I just love your no rules approach. The first time I saw you dip your brush into 2 colors I was just like wow I get this. It’s like mixing colors on the page. This will make me feel less scared to put paint to paper. Also I see how much water you use and I love it. I live in a desert and it’s been hard to get water to paint ratios. Things dry so fast that following some instructions are hard because mine is dry by the time i am to add the next color or step. I just about had a heart attack when that drop of water hir your paper. Oh but not you. You said no worries make a leaf out of that. Thank you for you open free way of things. I learn so much from your videos. Maybe I will find my own personal style now.
I have two color wheels in my art board for guides. One made wit red, yellow and blue, and the other one made with permanent rose, indigo and pale yellow. Just because I wanted to explore more mixes than just the usual, like you've said in this video.
The yellow makes sense in that one composition because it's technically a double comp. 1st comp: red-yellow-blue triatic. 2nd comp: red-green-blue-orangr tetratic
Awesome perspective on color! I’ve been an artist my whole life and I’ve only heard about playfulness in color choice in vague terms. You’re soooo right about magenta! I finally learned last year that mixing colors is infinitely more interesting to look at and that we done need a gigantic pallette, but a bright pink/red/magenta is a game changer.
I had a colour theory class in college and its actually quite fascinating. Although I’m not the type to find the EXACT tint I need like they wanted me to do, I was able to experiment some very nice things and made one of my favorite piece (that I lost 🥲) I really really like the contrast between warm and cold colours too, I love the video ! Made me want to experiment with the colour wheel
My dad was a professional printer throughout his career and he taught me that the true primary colours are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. These three, plus black, are the standard inks used in colour printing. There are no other pigments you can mix to get any of these three. You can mix them to get red (magenta + yellow) and blue (cyan + magenta), and green (cyan + yellow) - which are themselves the three primary colours of light.
Haa.
Makes real sense. O.o
That's the CMYK model and is used in printing :D
The RYB model is outdated but is the one taught in schools
The RGB model is an additive model, while CMYK is subtractive
If I remember correctly, additive colours are from luminiant things, such as digital screens, which is why the RGB model is used by digital artists, while subtractive colours mix together with things like ink; they don't produce their own light
So RGB and CMYK are both primary colour models, just differing in their use :D
@@Jess-on-the-Tube Agreed! That would make more sense, I hope they implement it better :D
@@HermitFanimations woah, seeing hermit fanfimations here, so nice:)
As an art student in the early 1980s, color theory exercises were done with W&N gouache in cyan, magenta, primrose (yellow), a neutral black and a neutral white. We mixed everything as mixtures mostly, but the color palette simulated printer inks on a white page.
When I was in art school my design teacher taught us colour theory (CMYK) and light theory (RGB). Magenta isn’t in the rainbow because the rainbow is light, but you can actually mix red from magenta and yellow because that’s colour. Soooo cool!
This!!!
Yes! True primaries cannot be mixed from other colors but thou can mix red and blue. It takes a bit to wrap your mind around it but once you do, the fun begins!
The reason why it's not in the rainbow is because the eye's color receptors that perceive red and blue cover wavelength ranges that do not exclusively overlap each other.
@@nysaea yeah the HUMAN eye. apparently like certain insects have more color receptors than we do to perceive more colors and honestly i think about that. also that cats and dogs see less. so weird
@@imsunnybaby Not only insects (which are another can of worms) but most birds and fish are tetrachromatic as well and can see UVs, and there are also animals with a monochromatic set of photoreceptors like snails. Never mind the mantis shrimp that has 12 types. But arent' we talkign about art here?
Quick tip: CMYK is great for people who love bright, unnatural color palettes for their art pieces. RYB is great for more natural subjects like landscapes, portraits etc. My style definitely a mixture of both so I always use a split primary palette in every medium I use. Obviously this is not a RULE it was just helpful for me when I was first starting to pick colors.
This is an incredible insight I hadn’t thought of; thank you!!!
do you have advice for a CMY and a RYB choice?
I feel seen with this comment. I suck at mixing color trying to imitate rl esp when it comes to my fav subject - blooms/flowers and general plant
@katriannam sorry! I don't often recheck my comments since people usually don't ask me stuff lol. CMY - Cyan (or even pthalo blue green shade or W&N aqua green, for slightly muted mixes/shadows), quin magenta & a cool yellow like lemon yellow or benzimdazolone yellow, which is slightly warmer than lemon. I use the latter in watercolor, but usually lemon in other mediums. RYB - in watercolor, DS' quin red or quin coral, diarylide yellow (warm yellow) and pthalo blue. Hope this helps or that you found your answer long before I responded 😊
As someone who worked with 35mm film back in the day: The yellow works because it's the inverse of blue. That is, if you take a picture of something blue, that color will show up as a yellow on your negative film.
Red, Green, Blue are the primary colors of light, and mixed together they form white. Because light is additive. If you take one of the colors out of the mix you get the inverse of that color.
Remove red and you get cyan, remove green and you get magenta, remove blue and you get yellow. (Yes, Red and Green light mixes to yellow).
Remove all the colors and you get the inverse of white: Black.
This is why Cyan, Magenta and Yellow make for a much better set of colors for painting, because they do in fact add together correctly to create the other colors. Red and Magenta, as well as cyan and blue are very similar colors though, so I understand where the confusion comes from. I also assume those three colors have historically been easier to make than cyan and magenta.
@8 bit synth When did I say yellow is the complementary color of blue?
Inverses aren't the complementary colors. That said Cyan is a type of bluish color, which invers to red. Red and yellow mixes to orange.
Which is why orange is a more pleasing complementary color to bluish tones, because bluish colors sit between cyan and blue, so the complementary sits best between yellow and red.
@8 bit synth he's talking about the negatives. Not the color wheel opposites
No they don't. You can't create what most people call a true red with Magenta and Yellow nor a pure orange. We just don't care much about those colors. Cyan is blue. Blue is a color category. You can't make a cobalt blue or an aquamarine blue with cyan blue. Mixing light and mixing pigment are not at all the same thing.
@@giseletheriault8633 The reason they don't mix as you argue is due to pigment density. (Did you even watch the video?)
Cyan isn't blue, look at a color wheel.
There used to be a time when people would say orange was a type of red, or yellow, depending on the hue. And yet today we consider orange it's own color.
Cyan isn't blue.
And sure mixing light and mixing pigment isn't the same thing. But the right pigments to mix in order to mix color correctly are cyan magenta and yellow. Why do you think printers and printing presses uses exactly those colors?
@@TheAurgelmir "Blue" is a color category. "Cyan" is not a color category. There is only one cyan. There are many blues. In the context of teaching children or lay people colors we are referring to categories not specifics. I don't know what you mean by "mix color correctly". CYM doesn't mix all colors accurately. It still creates versions of them. You will not achieve the clarity and saturation of cadmium orange or red by mixing yellow and magenta.
❤ you cannot possibly know the impact of your gift and willingness to share it ❤ before a near fatal assault that resulted in a TBI I had a life, career and most of all love of painting. 11 years now...I couldn't do it. couldn't remember the technique. the joy. just couldn't get there. today Christmas morning...my kids are in different places in the US and alone I was honestly feeling despair...but still had drawers of paper, brushes and unopened watercolors that I used to love. some how your video came up on a random link on Google. I came to just peek...."KNOWING" it was still pointless.
hmmm...my heart is on fire. my spirit is glowing. I cannot wait to get everything out that I've hoarded for years hoping that someday I'd remember how to paint.. recapture the joy of color and sharing it.
I have no words to thank you * you're right. you were put here to teach watercolors. and at the risk of being over dramatic, I'd go further and say, for me...perhaps to save my life.
I'm not alone anymore today, Christmas day, I am painting.
bless you little one...I'll be here watching as much as I can, as often as I can (I can no longer work bc of brain injury from asphyxiation) so I can once again share the beauty you've grasped and brought back to life. MERRY CHRISTMAS and an unbelievable NEW YEAR 🎉❤
I’m in tears reading and re-rereading your comment. Your heart is on fire. Oohhh what a gift that is to me! But let it be your gift too. Every brushstroke is momentum, no matter how small, awkward or ugly it may be. You are most definitely not alone. So glad you found this community
@KristyRice thank you so much for your encouragement and support ❤️ I am slowly, but delightfully trying each tiny step, one by one, thrilled to see the colors rolling across my paper again.
no "objects" yet, but I am excited nonetheless. my TBI unfortunately keeps me quite self protective and introverted (I had many years as the wild child!) but please know I am here, learning and so very grateful.
I'll check in but am just loving my world of watercolors again. ♥︎
I studied this at design school. It's about how colors reflect light and mix together, by addition or subtraction. When you take the colors as light, basically electromagnetic waves, you can obtain any color by mixing red, green and blue (RGB) light sources. These are mixed by addition. And if you mix them all, you get white light. When using pigments, the real primary colors are cyan magenta and yellow. They are mixed by subtraction of light reflection. If you mix them all, you get a desaturated muddy color. I hope I was clear and accurate enough. Have a lovely day
Absolutely. Appreciate it. The video was meant to scratch the surface in an approachable way. Although I’m happy to have a comments section bursting with so much science :)
That is when using light, not pigments. If what you were saying were true printers would use just those pigments. High end printing of artwork or even photographs use more pigments. Even house paint uses 9 to 12 pigments.
I didn't expect magenta to be the golden colour at the end lol I just picked up Quinacridone Red acrylic, at first I was like ew this is too pink for me, I wanted something more warm. Until I mixed it with blue and holy moly! You're right! Magenta does make a fantastic purple!
It sure does :) Glad you tried it!
Once I read the book of Michael Wilcox named “Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green”. That was a game changer!!!! The best explanation of a color theory to me at least!!! So structured and well explained. I work in a fashion industry and that knowledge of color helps a lot to work with colors especially when it comes to the combo with a person’s natural palette, when ppl are convinced that some colors don’t work for them.
Thanks for sharing!
I'll have to look that book up, thank you!
I always enjoy your very professional videos. I love your twelve color color wheel. It’s a work of art. 💖💜💝
You are a very good instructor. Easy to follow and clear in your way to communicate your concepts. This is one of the best explanations of color theory. You make it easy and entertaining. Great job, Kristy!
Wow, thank you!
Still here and just one more reason: YOU are the QUEEN of watercolor FUN!!
A split complementary would be choosing the two colors adjacent to the compliment. For violet and the compliment yellow, a split comp would be violet, yellow-orange and yellow-green. For yellow with a compliment of violet, the colors would be yellow, red-violet and blue-violet.
I love that you painted the same thing over and over for this exercise! I just got some new paints today so this is what im going to do in my studio tuday!
Have fun!
To be honest i don't care about color wheel, i paint by instinct and enjoy everything about choosing color and some time making mistake...i am free 😄
Perfection. Love it!!
My sistah !!!!! 💚🌻🌿🌿
Saaaamee
I wish I were here! I’m a very realistic artist and I have a hard time trying to figure out what colors to replace them with instead to do more expressive artwork.
Love that vibe.
9:40 > Why the makes sense.
From a color theory perspective IS a slight outlier. It is sorta similar to the warm green that flanks the page. If I were painting, I would totally use that green as a shading color for that yellow.
From a composition perspective is where things get interesting as the composition is doing a diagonal symmetry thing.
So the yellow is the only thing in this composition that's unpaired and doesn't have a compliment, it also right on the line of symmetry and the focal point of the piece.
Putting the only color that isn't paired feels... intentional.
Ahhh love this explanation!
I've been coloring my drawings by instinct for over 50 years now----my mother was a locally well known artist, and she taught me the color wheel and color theory, but she rarely used either. She created her works from her imagination, and her weavings were incredibly gorgeous pieces that were exquisite works of art in their own right.
She started out in oils, but after about 20 years of that, switched to weaving and to quilt making, and there was no stopping her once she began dying all her own yarns for her woven pieces!
While I don't sew, nor do I weave, I LOVE to draw and to color the drawings, and do so prolifically, and to my own satisfaction.
Thanks for sharing!
I know your comment is from months ago. Your Mother sounds like a wonderful and very creative woman. Do you still have her weavings? Or any of her quilts? If you do, I am so incredibly jealous of you!! That is very special.
Still here and talking about the fact there are so many colours in there makes me feel happy because I like specific mixtures to capture what I like.
I can’t paint anything without opera pink .. game changer for sure x
Glad to hear!
Kristy…one word…BRILLIANT.
Oh geex, wow thanks!! Just how I see things :)
Whenever I feel distressed with my painting, I come to your videos and relaxation, peace, and joy flow over me and I breathe again. Blessing on you.
Thankyou for a lovely informative colour painting. Much love to you and viewers😘👌🙏👋👋🌈
Thanks!!!
The Paint box poster. The reason the yellow shirt works is because this picture is every single color scheme at once. Along the edges there is a complementary pink/green border. The figure is wearing a triatic color scheme of orange/blue/yellow while also sporting a secondary-triatic color scheme (Two secondary and one primary color) of orange/yellow/green. As your eye moves through the picture you spot the artist pallet. The pallet is a hidden tetradic. The paints on the pallet even have that 'dirty-cold-margin area' you talked about earlier. Each one of the colors on that pallet will be a complementary to at least one or more color throughout the entire piece.
This is a wonderful way to encounter color, exploring the liminal spaces!!!!! I appreciate your videos, and respect the time and talent it takes to make these life changing moments for us. I am such a nontraditional artist, I love your philosophy.
I have some intuitive sense of color, but have been curious as to why I can't get the feeling I want when I mix my own watercolors in my small travel kit. Now I know why!!!! I have ALWAYS loved Magenta and Cyan. Permission to use them has now been granted-YEA.
I was looking for a color theory class, but now I think I will take your advice and play with the combinations first. and figure out the best and most fun ways to invite more cyan and magenta to the party.
BTW, my apartment is in an old Victorian that is painted Purple ,Green, and Yellow-Orange. It was one of my main reasons for living here!
Thank you so very much.
Oh wow this is wonderful to hear! Thank you for sharing so much. I never quite know of my way of sharing info makes sense in heads beyond my own lol!!
I couldn’t have said that any better myself. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and happy painting.
@@carolinehill8564 thanks! You too! Happy creating.
Baby steps is very good advice. I tried to be a really good artist too early on and started losing confidence. Now I sketch and paint a little bit everyday and copied other work which helped me learn and now I’m just using my imagination and photos and from other little exercises I’ve done I’m starting to get better more than I thought I could be.
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Working with Colour is legit like a nightmare to me, but when it’s explained like this, and the cyan magenta yellow thing... you’re amazing! Thank you! I can’t lie Colour theory is scary especially when I see it explained so rigidly so I gave up on understanding but now I want to go draw ❤️
You are exactly who I made this video for AND you had the exact reaction I was hoping for…inspiration not fear :) Thank you for sharing!
I'm not an artist but I hope this video helps me decide which colours to choose for my crochet blankets, and which order I should have them.
This is such a beautiful video and incredibly interesting and fun to listen to.
Kristy Rice, I adore you. This is amazing!
Thank you so much!
Wow, thank you. I was just thinking about getting a book on color theory, but this actuelly hit the spot. Thank you!
Still get that book! I just skimmed the surface so if this is interesting dive in!!
What a wonderful video, for some reason it all clicked within me after rebelling against the concept of color theory for such a long time. I was finding it boring but now I feel like a whole world of joy, experiment and wonder has opened up to me! Your split complementary is gorgeous. What you did is actually a split complementary with the 2 complementary colours being 2 steps away from the direct complementary instead of 2 and what blows my mind is that it works too! I tried this with other combos and it works so well! Imagine the possibilities wow mind blown!!
This video is just what I needed!
Omg just getting into watercolor painting and colors (seriously) for the first time and it’s been kinda overwhelming. This video makes using and understanding color theory really easy for beginners like me!
Thanks so much
You're so welcome!
you are such a great teacher ,bless you in your art journey,im glad you are here so often;
Thank you! Thanks for being here! :)
For complementary (commonly misspelled as complimentary), think "to complete". Helps in the spelling, but also helps define the word. Pairs of complementary colors "complete" the color wheel.
Take for instance yellow and violet. Yellow brings in yellow and violet brings in red and blue. All three primaries are represented by the pair of complements.
Holy wow, never realized I was misspelling this! Gahh, thank you!!! 🤦🏻♀️Also love these “complete” concept sooo much 😘
I did a great deal of rughooking and made custom rugs for family and friends. I reverse-engineered Warhol's work and realized that he used triadic and tetratic combos, and used them myself, to great effect! ETA I know why the yellow works, it ties in the primary colour of blue with the green, which of course is yellow and blue. Easy peasy ;-)
Wonderful!
Clear, encouraging and your enthusiasm is contagious! I am grateful when an artist so freely shares their experience and knowledge. GOD BLESS YOU!
Thanks so much for being here!
Still here & loving the fresh approach!
Yes. I love your color studies. You made it much simpler to understand.
I'm so glad!
Makes sense to paint the same subject in the different color schemes to understand them better
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this beautiful video! It was super fun watching your video and really motivating and inspirational! Keep creating amazing art videos! Love what you're doing!! Gonna go watch the next one!
Thank you so much!!
@@KristyRice You're very welcome!!🥰
There are there are three sets of primary colors, primary meaning the colors you mix all other colors from: red/yellow/blue for pigment, magenta/yellow/cyan for printing, and red/green/blue for light. (Look at individual pixels on a tv for that one.)
Yes, and I think it's rather unfortunate that we teach kids about primary colors, but use the least primary like of the options.While it does allow you to make brown, which is completely impossible with RGB, it also leads to confusing things like being able to make a primary out of a secondary and primary color which doesn't work out so well in either of the other systems.
There is no distinction to be made between pigments and printing. What do you think we print with?
The RYB set as primaries was made back when it was the best available option, before we could produce cyan and magenta pigments, which are much closer approximations to true primary colors. It just stuck for historical reasons, but makes little sense with today's pigment technology.
@@nysaea Agreed. We should discard the red, yellow, blue model altogether. All it does is limit artists’ color ranges.
@@Window4503 To be fair, a well chosen RYB palette can be a great choice for artistical reasons, they can make lovely muted hues.
Teaching it to kids as a primaries palette is what I have a problem with. I've just read too many comments of people who had their confidence in art shattered because they couldn't mix bright secondaries and they thought they were just terrible at it and had no business pursuing art. It's just heartbreaking.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade The RGB additive system also allows you to make brown. You may just be confused as to what brown is: ua-cam.com/video/wh4aWZRtTwU/v-deo.html
Thank you for a very good explanation that makes it practical and simplified so color theory is loose to be a part of the artwork to enhance it and "blend" with the whole piece. Color should be experimental instead of boxed in.
Your color choices and brush work are superb. You should give a shot a mini painting. I think your style would fit it great.
This is so cool! I will be watching several times and painting along. 🎨🖌
Wonderful!
You are one awesome teacher. I know what colors please me, but I am not an artist. I just like to play. I’ve been over color theory many times and my eyes glaze over rather quickly but I keep coming back. I will surely learn something when I next play and watch your video again! Thanks for a very cool lesson. 😀
Thanks for watching!
I love this one! You gave us a starting point with a plan.circle! Around and around with an eye on focal point.fun fun.thanks Kristy.big hugs,Maddy
😘😘😘
Kristy has great brush control. I'm very free with color now. I'll often use any color. If I don't like what I see I paint over it.
😘😘😘
@@KristyRice
That would be in abstract painting that I go crazy with the colors. But I did study color theory in college. I enjoyed the class. It was pretty technical. I'm good that way, even enjoyed studying perspective, which scares some art students.
Faber Birren has great books on color theory. I lean towards recognizing 4 primary colors. Each primary has a primary opposite.
You are very good with the brush. I believe you have done some sign lettering. The craft of hand lettering is being lost due to the computerized cutting of vinyl letters. I worked painting signs. I never mastered the hand lettering. The shop used me mostly for artsy signs, and carving wood signs. That was 40 years ago. The son inherited the business and he'll still call me sometimes to come and carve a sign, or paint something. I painted a rooster on a restaurant sign for him recently. He likes the way I can just do it.
Good wishes to you, my fellow painter.
I love your approach to color theory! The interest is in the “in between” 💕
😘😘
This is brilliant. Thank you. Wish I had this kind of explanation in college back in the day
Thanks for watching!
Thank you for this! I struggle with color. This has actually given me a base to build from to improve that. Thanks again! Amazing content.
I’m so glad :)
YES! I began painting traditional rosemaling almost 50 years ago and that has a very specific color palette. Green was made with ivory black and cad yellow. Ugh!
There was no purple and no pink, because those are more modern colors. Imagine my joy when i bought a few more colors and started mixing on my own! Fast forward 20 years and people actually wrote books on the real basic triad! I think inkjet printers had helped the comprehension of that but not The practice in art making.
The real problem has been lightfastness or the lack of it. The auto industry discovered things in the 1950s that brought us pink Cadalacs and turquoise Chevys. And that changed our paint boxes.
With all the excitement about lightfastness, i still don't understand why people still insist on using Opera and the traditional alizirin crimson. There is no perfect replacement, but still! Even when just decorating notes to distant nephews and nieces, those may be kept for 100 years in scrapbooks... or at least that was what happened in my family.
@@ninamarie60
❤👍
There used to be serious issues with light fastness of paints in olden times, which is a shame as many of the older paintings looked absolutely stunning before the colors faded. And there's a bunch of paintings that just don't look right unless you view them in person with the proper lighting.
I love the way you use your paint brush.
Thanks so much!
Still here, this is super easy to understand and I love it
So glad!
I own multiple Winsor Newton Pinks. They are my favorites.
I'm loving your color study chart!
Thanks!
Learning from you is such a joy!
Your work is extraordinary...very beautiful
Thank you so much!
loved your examples! For me, images are so much easier to understand than words.
I love how you teaching!
I was so happy when you to add Magenta and Cyan to your palette. 1,000% agree and have been met with some backlash in online art communities over it... "CMY is for PRINT NOT PAINT! Waaaghhh!! " Dx ... If you want that sort of dirty look from classic paintings (like that 1940's-esque zoo painting you showed), by ALL means, use the classic color wheel. But if you want the pure 80's POP saturation of an eye-burning orange... USE MAGENTA AND CYAN!!
Years ago I wondered why some of the commercial illustrations were so unified and restful. What I discovered was that whatever colors they employed they would pick a single color to influence all the colors they used. For example add a little single blue to every color you use. If added to orange it begins to neutralize the contrast, add to red and it cools the color, etc., etc. Then moving up and down in grey scales adds rich transitions. The other portion was pigment palettes alizarin crimson vs. cadmium red.,
cadmium yellow vs. lemon yellow, The cadmium palette is warmer and the other cooler. Loomis is a good example of this color styling.
Beautifully explained
@@KristyRice Thank you.
I am a knitter and found this helpful. Thanks
Ahhhh so cool!
ah! i will try that color theory chart! thats something new i haven't done before. i have tried for many many years to understand color theory and only when i finally got a split complementary set and mixed my own colors did it actually sink in and stay in my brain.
Please do!
Thanks for this! I've been relatively familiar with color theory(I took a class when I was younger), but this is the perfect refresher for me. I love the way you explain it! It feels so fun and inspiring!
Okay, as someone who was very interested colour(and is still very much fascinated by it), but is not a painter, I would like to add my own knowledge.
(VERY LONG, plus replies)
1st. The Red-Yellow-Blue paints vs. CMYK thing exists because they are 2 very different systems. But they're also kinda the same.
The red yellow and blue taught in schools is an example of a "subtractive" colour system, while the RGB lights on things like LEDs are an "additive" colour system. What this means is that, because paint as a medium is a physical substance, while colour is the light reflecting off on it, you're not really mixing light to make those new colours.
What paint does is subtract all light that is not, say red, and reflects red light into your eyes. And when mixing blue into that, you reflect some red light from the red paint, some blue from the blue paint, and absorb other colours. The blue paint will absorb some of the red light that falls onto the overall mixture because it's not red, vice versa. So in the end, you get a paint mixture perceived as a mix of both red and blue, but also darker than the individual colours.
And as you would see with paint, the more colours to that mixture you add, the darker and darker the paint will look to the point it's almost 100% black. Because there's so much light that's being absorbed and not reflected back, and black is the absence of light.
Which leads into RGB: it's called additive for the same reason the other one is called subtractive; you are adding light. The three "primary colours of light" as it were, combine to make white light. And inversing that, mix red, green and blue together and you will get black. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are the secondary colours for this system, and similarly made by combining two of the primaries.
But the reason red, yellow, blue is used more than in schools than magenta, cyan, yellow, is actually just that: They are taught in schools. Since magenta and cyan are more complex, and because kinds with no knowledge would see no or only minor differences, they switched cyan and magenta for blue and red. It's just now the idea that has stuck because everyone was taught it from an impressionable age.
Another thing is that I really can't not point out the incorrect spellings/terminology:
It is spelled "Monochromatic". It even did in to the auto-generated captions. It comes from mono- as in "one", and chroma, which is "colour". "Monochrimatic" is not a word. Same for "Triadic"; "Triatic" is apparently a nautical term.
"Tetradic" I believe you got correct, but also not. To my knowledge/research, tetradic is a word used for both the "rectangle" configuration, and a "square" configuration.
However, you mentioned that the colours you used "formed a rectangle", but also said that they were "equidistant form each other". They were not, that would have been a "square" configuration, which can be achieved by picking four colours that were each 2 colours apart on your wheel, but the spacings between your selected colours were either 1 or 3.
"Complimentary" comes from "compliment", as in talking positively about something. "Complementary" on the other hand, is the correct spelling and means to pair well with something, that putting said things together will enhance or emphasize aspects of each other. This misspelling carried over to "split complementary"
And speaking of split complementary, you chose violet as the base colour. And you then chose yellow-orange and blue-green. Which you did get wrong, because split complementary means the colour choice should have been yellow-green and not blue-green. I was also kinda confused because you even the edit pointed to yellow-green as a colour you used.
Lastly, please do not misinterpret this, I mean no ill intention. You even admitted you may have gotten it wrong, and that you were not particularly focused on getting it right. And I also think it is a very beautiful painting despite being an inaccurate example of that specific colour harmony. I intention was to inform and correct misinformation.
Oh, and 2 things I forgot to mention!
1. I really appreciated that whole thing about us placing metaphorical "fences" around the colours on the wheel. Light is a spectrum; there are a slew infinitely small degrees of colours in between the margins. The sections of the colour wheel are tools to help us understand that there exist colours within colours.
The secondary colours are between two primary colours because that's was where they came from, the intersection of those primaries. The tertiaries are similarly, the space where the primary and secondary merged and melded. The goal should be to explore further and discover those in-betweens, not make more boxes.
2. You talked about how red and blue don't exactly make that bright purple you expected it to when you were a kid. And you're right! There is actually another model of the colour wheel and tried to fix that issue, called a "colour bias" wheel.
It's essentially the colour wheel(typically without tertiaries though), that replace the primary-coloured segments with arrows, showing a specific or a few varieties that lean more toward one secondary colour, with another arrow for varieties that lean toward the other secondary colour the primary can make.
Thanks sooo very much for all the insight :) I had theory drilled into me in college but now I approach color from a more intuitive/emotional stance. Isn’t it all just incredibly fascinating??!!
No, magenta and cyan are absolutely not any more complex than red and blue, they just were not available as dyes or pigments back when people started theorizing color theory. RYB is only still taught because historical reasons and/or stubborn people, but new technolgy has made RYB obsolete as a primaries palette.
They're still perfectly valid as a color palette, they're just terrible approximations to true primaries. CMY is a much closer fit.
Plus, kids DO very much notice the difference. I've read countless comments on this kind of videos saying that back at school, they were always unable to create certain colors with their primaries and thought there was something wrong with them, and were led to believe that they're just bad at art and should give up. Bad primaries do actual damage to kids.
You have given me permission not to get hung up on colour and feel it more BUT I still think colour study and understanding is important as then you know why your painting isn't working .....TY ....I will be watching this again love from london 🇬🇧
Thank you!
Love your positivity and cheerful attitude! This is a good video for color theory introduction. Nicely done! :)
Thank you!
you could say the red yellow blue sepia zoo tin art is monochromatic because in a sense theyre all warm colors. its warm orange/red warm yellow and a warm blue(towards greenish) so it has a "sepia" "faded" effect ""monotone"" in that sense
Ahhhhh makes sense!!
This was super helpful. I haven’t really painted since college, but when this video popped up on the side of the history video I was watching the title intrigued. I subscribed and am looking forward to watching more of your stuff when I’m not trying to get ready for work. You’ve already inspired me to want to dig out my old Windsor & Newton paints and random brushes!
Oh this is amazing to hear! Dig those paints out!!!
Love the 'bleeding' color wheel:) Fascinating video:)
Thanks so much!! Cheers!!!
I look to the colours in nature that helps me alot. I look out my window and c the trees and flowers and hopefully I get it right on my paper!!!
This was amazing, and im so glad you did this! It def clears some things up for me
I'm so glad!
Great! I'm new to trying to create crafts, and I struggle to start because I have no idea what colors to use. Thank you.
Thanks for watching!
Many Christmases ago I needed some money so I painted Christmas windows. I didn't want to spend much on paint so I bought red, blue, yellow, black and white. I mixed whatever other colors I needed. I still think these are the only colors I need but I do choose my triad of colors from the edges. Yep! Picking your pallet is an important part of the whole process.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for another great video! One does have to watch that magenta is light fast (if desirable), as colors like Opera are often not. Linking another artists video shows how much you care about art and helping your audience. Thank you - it was excellent. You are a prime example of how one person can make a positive difference in the lives of many.
Thanks so much!
Great video. I tend to operate on instinct with my colors. I pick a few and go to town and it usually "works" but I am bearing down on my technique these days, being more intentional, and learning some detail. This is a helpful video for that.
Thanks for this! I going to try out these ideas. I learned color mixing using a split primary color palette / color wheel.
Awesome!
I think this might be my favorite painting video ever. In under 15 minutes, it gives all information I need for practical painting. With practical examples. A lot of color harmony examples are done in the abstract manner, and my novice brain just can't handle the translation into concrete painting yet. And if watched carefully, a ton of brush technique too.
They don't teach color theory in school where I am from, so it was a gap in my knowledge for sure. I felt like my art comes out looking like a slightly depressed clown without it. So I started formally studying it this month. I am all for breaking rules, but I find it easier to do if I understand them first. This video goes on the permanent save for that exact purpose.
So glad to have helped!
i feel so inspired by this, thank you so much!! i am definitely going to make my own little colour wheel and studies now! :3
I’m glad!
These videos are so soothing
This video came into my youtube page just when i started to search for color theory, thank you, explanation was very clear and simple!
Glad to hear!
Here is a quick bit of colour theory on how to make bright colours and muted colours. If you want bright colors add all cool colors together. The cool colours are Hansa yellow Lt., phthalo blue G/S, and Q. Rose. These colours all lean towards the blue, and green side of the colour wheel. If you want the more muted colours add all warm colors together. The warm colours are Gamboge, Ultramarine, and Pyrrol Scarlet. These colours lean towards the red, and orange colours on the colour wheel. I think the perfect colour theory watercolour paint set is Daniel Smith's essential set. It has the colors I mentioned so it takes the stress out of what paints to choose for a good color theory mixing set.
Thank you!!
This is exactly the video I needed to see. Thank you! I have been feeling so overwhelmed with color theory, especially when it comes to diving in to watercolors.
Don't let the "color theory" get to you...play with your colors. As you do, you'll see how they work (or don't work, lol) together. Like anything else, learning color play takes a bit of time. For some reason people often think they should just know this stuff (I've taught watercolor for years). My question is always "How often has it come up for you? Would you be frustrated with your lack of knowledge of blood types if you're not in the medical field? Or angry because you don't know how to rebuild the engine in your car--unless you've done it a thousand times?"
Just starting something new is a big deal--good for you 🤗 You'll get there. This will all make sense in time--just keep at watercolor, keep moving forward and before you know it...it'll be second nature to you too.
Thanks for watching! You can do it!
Is it okay to completely break the color wheel and not follow it? Like mixing all colors? Or mixing multiple colors at once?
Yes, I’m going to try this exercise just because it looks like fun! Thank you.
Have fun!
When will someone talk about the actual pigments, as the color names change per brand. A color filled with different pigments reacts in mixing very differently than a color with a single pigment.
Oooh that’s a big loooong video!!!!
@@KristyRice Big, long and delicious, though!!! 🤤
The easiest way to find the same pigment as another brand is to look at the pigment code on the back of the tube/jar. Like Cad med red by liquitex acrylic has PR9 & PR170 to make their cad med red. It's basically the chemical compound that makes up the paint it self. If that makes any sense? Also each red pigment per say can be cool and warm tone so depending if you mix it with a cool or warm yellow, it could make a whole new range of colours.
semufu9 answered your question, which.... yeah. i usually read the label on art supplies i buy, and try to keep a little notebook with some of my faves' pigment codes jotted down for future reference
happy trails
That's one of the reasons why better brands will have a little test splotch on the tube. So, you know pretty precisely what the color is going to look like, even if there is some variation between batches.
I loved the split complimentary. Thanks for the challenge to make a wheel. Have only done it once before. Love your way of presenting color theory.
Awesome! Thank you!
So thoughtful! I really appreciate this! Thanks!!
Glad it was helpful!
Wow, you are so incredibly watchable. Actually you are the most enjoyable teacher ever! Thank you. ❤❤❤
You explained this so well and is easier to understand. Thankyou for sharing this with us all.
I’m so glad this was helpful!
This video just makes me feel so calm and safe thank you
I am pretty new to watercolor and just feeling like I am getting it, I just love your no rules approach. The first time I saw you dip your brush into 2 colors I was just like wow I get this. It’s like mixing colors on the page. This will make me feel less scared to put paint to paper. Also I see how much water you use and I love it. I live in a desert and it’s been hard to get water to paint ratios. Things dry so fast that following some instructions are hard because mine is dry by the time i am to add the next color or step. I just about had a heart attack when that drop of water hir your paper. Oh but not you. You said no worries make a leaf out of that. Thank you for you open free way of things. I learn so much from your videos. Maybe I will find my own personal style now.
You will!!
I have two color wheels in my art board for guides. One made wit red, yellow and blue, and the other one made with permanent rose, indigo and pale yellow. Just because I wanted to explore more mixes than just the usual, like you've said in this video.
I’d love to see that perm rose, indigo and pale yellow!! Was it Naples? This combo makes me want sing a little!!
@@KristyRice it's cadmium yellow pale from Windsor and Newton. I can take a picture and share it with you, I love the colors that came out from it.
THis is just what I need Kristy!
Excellent video. The amount of time it must have taken to produce it with all the visuals scars me. Looking forward to more. Thanks.
Much appreciated!
Great, clear explanation! Thanks so much.
You bet!
Always STILL HERE,,love your teaching,,,THANKYOU,,??🎉❤
So glad!
I love your joy. Beautiful.
You are so kind!
The yellow makes sense in that one composition because it's technically a double comp. 1st comp: red-yellow-blue triatic. 2nd comp: red-green-blue-orangr tetratic
Awesome perspective on color! I’ve been an artist my whole life and I’ve only heard about playfulness in color choice in vague terms. You’re soooo right about magenta! I finally learned last year that mixing colors is infinitely more interesting to look at and that we done need a gigantic pallette, but a bright pink/red/magenta is a game changer.
Glad it was helpful!
Perfect video!! This is going to be my next painting project!
Wahooo!!
Beautiful lesson. 💕
I had a colour theory class in college and its actually quite fascinating. Although I’m not the type to find the EXACT tint I need like they wanted me to do, I was able to experiment some very nice things and made one of my favorite piece (that I lost 🥲)
I really really like the contrast between warm and cold colours too, I love the video ! Made me want to experiment with the colour wheel
That's awesome!