| The pictures below demonstrate how primary colours can be combined to create secondary colours. Pigments, such as paint or ink, combine differently than colours found in light. Therefore, there are two sets of primary colours. | |
| Primary colour: When combined in different amounts, the three primary colours can make all other colours. | |
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MIXING PIGMENTS The primary colours are commonly known as red, blue and yellow, but more accurate names for them are magenta, cyan and yellow. If you mix all the primary colours of pigment together evenly you get black.
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MIXING LIGHT Note that the primary colours of pigment are the secondary colours of light. And, that the secondary colours of pigment are the primary colours of light. If you mix all the primary colours of light together evenly you get white.
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 Try this: Do these primary colours look different than the colours that you always believed were primary? Indeed, inaccurate primary colours of paint are packaged and sold frequently. For colours to be truly primary, one must be able to combine them to create nice, clean looking, bright secondary colours. Test your primary colours. For example, if your blue is truly primary, you should be able to mix it with yellow to get a nice bright, clean looking green AND you should be able to mix it with magenta to get a nice bright, clean looking purple. Likewise, test your yellow and magenta for accurate secondary colours. Do any of your secondary colours appear brownish? If so, your primaries are not true. Indeed, this is one reason why many artist invest in a wide variety of colours of paint. Click here for a colour wheel shape that you can print.
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| Next, take an empty package that has been printed in full colour (a cereal box, a cookie package, a crayon box, etc.) and carefully open it all the way so that you can see the flaps that have been folded inward and perhaps glued. Somewhere on a hidden flap, printers often provide small colour samples to ensure accuracy. Here you will find all the colours that were used to print the entire package. If the package was printed in full colour you should see the three primary colours, plus black, plus any special colours such as a metalic. How do the very accurate primary colours used by the printer compare to the primary colours of paint that you have been using? |
