Color Theory: Part 1

     There are two really important lessons about color that don't seem to be common knowledge:

     1. There are TWO sets of primary colors, and red blue and yellow isn't even one of them.
     2. Magenta is a color we can see but we can not measure it physically.

     It concerns me a bit that I took a color theory class in college for my art degree and neither of these things were mentioned. It concerns me even more that across the world art teachers are telling students the primary colors are red, blue, and yellow, which turns out to be a less than accurate way to explain the color wheel. There are actually two sets of three primary colors, one for additive color and one for subtractive color.

Additive color mixing looks like this:

Subtractive color mixing looks like this:

     Additive color represents the color mixing of waves, and the primary colors are red, blue, and green. This color mixing can be seen in our computer monitors (pixels), flames, and the color of the sky, including sunsets. Subtractive color represents the color mixing of particles, and the primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. This color mixing can be seen in anything made of matter, including paint, ink, clay, and juice. When the traditional primary colors of red, blue, and yellow are taught, they are meant to represent subtractive color, but cyan, magenta, and yellow is a more accurate representation of the color wheel and allows for greater color mixing ability. This is why computer ink cartridges are cyan, magenta, and yellow, not red, blue, and yellow. Also, the reason they are given the names additive and subtractive is because black is considered "nothing," and in additive color you start with black and add colors together until you get white; with subtractive color you start with white and take color away until you get black. (It's important to realize that black isn't actually "nothing," but more on that in Color Theory: Part 2)

     When you look at the entire color wheel, you can see the 6 primary colors make a balanced hexagon.

     

     Lesson number two is about how magenta is a color we can see, but cannot measure. In other words, we are hallucinating it, or maybe it is our "just" our imagination. Allow me to explain!

     This is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see with our eyes:

     It goes from red on one side to blue/violet on the other side (just like a rainbow). If you go past red you get into infrared, microwaves and radio waves, and past blue/violet is ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma waves. There will be more on the electromagnetic spectrum in other essays, but for now the main point is we can measure the wavelengths of all these colors, and in terms of physics, it is pretty well understood how they work. The interesting thing though is these colors go in a line, and we are able to perceive a color wheel. This is because our brain connects the red end to the blue end and gives us magenta as the mix of the two. The spooky thing is, according to physical measurement, magenta doesn't exist. This sets up all kinds of neat questions about neuroscience and the connections our brains and perceptions have to electromagnetism and the other forces of the the Universe.