Скачать или смотреть CMY? …what colours should you buy?! 🌈

I don’t know if you’ve spent a lot of time on arttok lately but there’s lots of videos (including a few of my own) busting the myth that red yellow and blue are the primary colours.

There are lots of reasons RYB have stuck with us (history of pigments, colour science, education, & the confusing language of colour) Eg. primary ‘quinacridone magenta’ could accurately be called red as its pigment code is categorized as red & cyan is a cool blue - red, yellow, & blue are generic hues embracing a wide range of colours.

So, when armed with the knowledge that cyan, yellow, & magenta are the truest primaries for painting what do you actually go out and buy? & why aren’t there colours simply named cyan yellow & magenta?

This is cuz in reality no true CMY colours exist in a form we can buy as paint. You only find these names in cheap paints where they’re usually an impure mix of pigments like Phthalo blue & white.

Physical pigments are imperfect so when artists refer to CMY they mean the closest approximate pigments available. Modern pigments like Phthalo Blue (red shade) PB15:1, Azo yellow medium PY75, & Quinacridone Magenta PR122 come the closest. But some artists choose permanent rose or cadmium yellow instead. 💙🩷💛

Colour science is only one important aspect to mixing physical paint. You also have to consider the transparency, permanence, dry time, texture & the undertones of the colours you pick.

So I think it’s important to learn all the science you can but also stay flexible, open minded & non judgemental when seeing how artists apply it. If it comes from a place of knowledge it’s not wrong to use imperfect red yellow and blue primaries if it fits your artistic intention.

In reality primary colours are usually more helpful just as a framework for understanding colour mixing. Rarely have I seen a professional artist use a CMY primary palette exclusively. No three paint colours on earth can mix all the colours and every artists has something different to say. ❤️