“Yeah! The real primary colours are CMY!”
Also bullshit.
Our RGB primaries are a simplification that comes from availability of pigments. While blue was originally a very rare and valuable pigment made from precious stones, it was still more available than magenta or cyan, which are made synthetically.
All of the following is taking paint mixing into mind.
When looking at a continuous colour wheel:
You can see where each colour sits on the spectrum. When you consider a RBY palette, we are limited to essentially the colours in this triangle:
Mixing a vibrant Purple or Green is often difficult with a basic rby colour palette, and a Magenta or Cyan is impossible. We define a primary colour as “foundational colours that cannot be created by mixing other colours”, which means that CMY are real primaries, right? Well, if we look at the CMy palette:
We DO get a wider range of colours, but you’ll notice that a true purple, green, blue, and red are still outside of our range. You can get a pretty close red with Yellow and Magenta, but it will never be as vibrant as a pure Red pigment. So then Red is a primary?
When painting, you should use the colours that you need for the work, and mix from there. The ‘primary colours’ are a tool to teach students the theory of colour mixing. It is not a perfect guide, but teaching complex colour theory to novice painters is just intimidation. Most people get an intro to art, learn RBY, and then leave art, don’t think about it again until a TikTok titled “school LIED to you” introduced CMY.
EDIT: this is from the perspective of an artist. I am not an expert, and certainly got something wrong in here, but the primary argument has always annoyed me
Are you confusing subtractive and additive colors? For subtractive (used for e.g. paints) you use CMY, with white being what you get with no colors and black is a perfect mix of full CMY. With subtractive each color takes light away.
Additive (used for lights) works the other way round: the base colors are RGB. No light colors is black, all light colors is white. Adding another color in additive adds more light.
So, sure, if you use additive base colors in a subtractive process, you will get garbage and vice versa.
Well written!
Yes we can use any colors as “primary colors”, I use 6 when I paint (plus burnt Sienna & Umber because I’m lazy).
The colors you chose lets you mix up paints in a gamut, a gamut of colors is what you can get from those “primaries” that constitute said gamut.
Cheers.
And here I thought the primary colors were RGB
RGB are the additive colors (light projected) CMYK are the subtractive colors (light reflected)
Any set of colors can make a primary color palette. It’s just that we most often mean for human eyesight.
Even then, when talking about perception, because the response of red and green comes in our eye overlap we need imaginary colors to uniquely express them. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/CIExy1931_ProPhoto.svg/1280px-CIExy1931_ProPhoto.svg.png
There are different sets of primaries used when we talk about screen, print, light, and paint.
Most people learn RBY through painting, whether as a child, or in art classes at school, and assume it applies to all colour.
I believe the actual quote is “Eraser head is my most spiritual film”.
I imagine you are right
I miss him so fucking much bros
lmfao
He was a master of comedy even though it wasn’t his focus. He just wanted to make cool art, and to him his movies were like moving paintings. I think Wild at Heart could be his funniest film.
