Color Theory Pt. 2!

I'm SO TIRED. So what do I do when I'm exhausted? Take a nap? No. I take a break from drawing and painting and look more into color theory! So yeah, I know I'm a little obsessed with this whole color thing, and I know that there really isn't any way to prove it one way or the other, but I thought I'd take a crack at it. By the way, if anyone really is interested in color theory, get James Gurney's book, Color and Light. It will open your mind! 

So here are some experiments that I did with some oil pigments. Trying to adapt pigments to the RGB and CMY color wheel really is hard because I lack a control. You could also say that these experiments work for the Munsell Wheel, and that'd be fine because both color wheels are pretty interchangeable.

So how do you create a control? Well, I need a primary color and a secondary color and I seemed to lack  either/or. Probably the closest color I could come to recreating was Yellow. I mixed Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Yellow Lite (Cadmium Yellow light probably would have worked just fine). Cadmium Yellow Lemon, although brighter and more saturated, just seemed way too cool to be a pure yellow. I proceeded to mix yellow with Permanent Violet (purple was always taught to be the compliment of yellow in school) and got a brownish color, not a pure gray.

I tried Ultramarine Blue and Cadmium Yellow next. Many people online have said that Ultramarine Blue is close to true RGB Blue in hue. This is not so. Of course, I got green. I know RGB Blue is a very warm blue, so I mixed Ultramarine with Permanent Violet and then mixed that with my True Yellow concoction. Eureka! I got gray! (the mixture looks a little too violet on my tray because I didn't mix the blue and violet very evenly on the left side). I did a few more tests with Ultramarine Blue and several yellows, Yellow Ochre being the closest, but still too green to be a gray.

Red was next. I don't have cyan, so again, I had to improvise. Gurney says Phthalo Cyan is the closest thing to true cyan, but that only comes in watercolor. I mixed Viridian and Verditer Blue (Cerulean Blue and Titanium White). I know RGB Red is a warm red…orangish, so I used Cadmium Red Lite. Remember, Lite doesn't mean it's a lighter tint, it means it leans toward the yellows. Deep leans toward the reds. My mixture made gray!

I also did some orange tests, even though orange is a tertiary color for RGB and CMY. Cerulean Blue and Cadmium Orange takes the cake.

Magenta. Where to begin? I tried my Rose Violet, but it's just too warm for Magenta. It's a shame, because I love using magenta to paint digitally. It mixes so well with reds and blues. I also don't have a green. I used a Viridian and Sap Green hybrid. Oh well. I gave up on that one.

So, what did I learn out of all of this besides the fact that purple and yellow are not compliments and that the RYB color wheel doesn't work? I think I learned that it really doesn't matter. You're never going to need three colors to make all the colors, so who cares? As long as you have a good set of paint, and know what colors are next to what and what combinations make gray, you'll do fine. It doesn't matter what is primary because the true gamut is so far beyond what pigments can actually reach, you might as well just remember that all color is relative. In fact, that is the golden rule: All color is relative…period.