Uncomplicated But Eye Opening Color Theory for Artists

When I was in art school my design teacher taught us colour theory (CMYK) and light theory (RGB). Magenta isn’t in the rainbow because the rainbow is light, but you can actually mix red from magenta and yellow because that’s colour. Soooo cool!

Quick tip: CMYK is great for people who love bright, unnatural color palettes for their art pieces. RYB is great for more natural subjects like landscapes, portraits etc. My style definitely a mixture of both so I always use a split primary palette in every medium I use. Obviously this is not a RULE it was just helpful for me when I was first starting to pick colors.

My dad was a professional printer throughout his career and he taught me that the true primary colours are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. These three, plus black, are the standard inks used in colour printing. There are no other pigments you can mix to get any of these three. You can mix them to get red (magenta + yellow) and blue (cyan + magenta), and green (cyan + yellow) - which are themselves the three primary colours of light.

As someone who worked with 35mm film back in the day: The yellow works because it's the inverse of blue. That is, if you take a picture of something blue, that color will show up as a yellow on your negative film. Red, Green, Blue are the primary colors of light, and mixed together they form white. Because light is additive. If you take one of the colors out of the mix you get the inverse of that color. Remove red and you get cyan, remove green and you get magenta, remove blue and you get yellow. (Yes, Red and Green light mixes to yellow). Remove all the colors and you get the inverse of white: Black. This is why Cyan, Magenta and Yellow make for a much better set of colors for painting, because they do in fact add together correctly to create the other colors. Red and Magenta, as well as cyan and blue are very similar colors though, so I understand where the confusion comes from. I also assume those three colors have historically been easier to make than cyan and magenta.

I didn't expect magenta to be the golden colour at the end lol I just picked up Quinacridone Red acrylic, at first I was like ew this is too pink for me, I wanted something more warm. Until I mixed it with blue and holy moly! You're right! Magenta does make a fantastic purple!

I studied this at design school. It's about how colors reflect light and mix together, by addition or subtraction. When you take the colors as light, basically electromagnetic waves, you can obtain any color by mixing red, green and blue (RGB) light sources. These are mixed by addition. And if you mix them all, you get white light. When using pigments, the real primary colors are cyan magenta and yellow. They are mixed by subtraction of light reflection. If you mix them all, you get a desaturated muddy color. I hope I was clear and accurate enough. Have a lovely day

Once I read the book of Michael Wilcox named “Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green”. That was a game changer!!!! The best explanation of a color theory to me at least!!! So structured and well explained. I work in a fashion industry and that knowledge of color helps a lot to work with colors especially when it comes to the combo with a person’s natural palette, when ppl are convinced that some colors don’t work for them.

A split complementary would be choosing the two colors adjacent to the compliment. For violet and the compliment yellow, a split comp would be violet, yellow-orange and yellow-green. For yellow with a compliment of violet, the colors would be yellow, red-violet and blue-violet.

This is a wonderful way to encounter color, exploring the liminal spaces!!!!! I appreciate your videos, and respect the time and talent it takes to make these life changing moments for us. I am such a nontraditional artist, I love your philosophy. I have some intuitive sense of color, but have been curious as to why I can't get the feeling I want when I mix my own watercolors in my small travel kit. Now I know why!!!! I have ALWAYS loved Magenta and Cyan. Permission to use them has now been granted-YEA. I was looking for a color theory class, but now I think I will take your advice and play with the combinations first. and figure out the best and most fun ways to invite more cyan and magenta to the party. BTW, my apartment is in an old Victorian that is painted Purple ,Green, and Yellow-Orange. It was one of my main reasons for living here! Thank you so very much.

The Paint box poster. The reason the yellow shirt works is because this picture is every single color scheme at once. Along the edges there is a complementary pink/green border. The figure is wearing a triatic color scheme of orange/blue/yellow while also sporting a secondary-triatic color scheme (Two secondary and one primary color) of orange/yellow/green. As your eye moves through the picture you spot the artist pallet. The pallet is a hidden tetradic. The paints on the pallet even have that 'dirty-cold-margin area' you talked about earlier. Each one of the colors on that pallet will be a complementary to at least one or more color throughout the entire piece.

I've been coloring my drawings by instinct for over 50 years now----my mother was a locally well known artist, and she taught me the color wheel and color theory, but she rarely used either. She created her works from her imagination, and her weavings were incredibly gorgeous pieces that were exquisite works of art in their own right. She started out in oils, but after about 20 years of that, switched to weaving and to quilt making, and there was no stopping her once she began dying all her own yarns for her woven pieces! While I don't sew, nor do I weave, I LOVE to draw and to color the drawings, and do so prolifically, and to my own satisfaction.

You are a very good instructor. Easy to follow and clear in your way to communicate your concepts. This is one of the best explanations of color theory. You make it easy and entertaining. Great job, Kristy!

To be honest i don't care about color wheel, i paint by instinct and enjoy everything about choosing color and some time making mistake...i am free 😄

I can’t paint anything without opera pink .. game changer for sure x

Working with Colour is legit like a nightmare to me, but when it’s explained like this, and the cyan magenta yellow thing... you’re amazing! Thank you! I can’t lie Colour theory is scary especially when I see it explained so rigidly so I gave up on understanding but now I want to go draw ❤️

What a wonderful video, for some reason it all clicked within me after rebelling against the concept of color theory for such a long time. I was finding it boring but now I feel like a whole world of joy, experiment and wonder has opened up to me! Your split complementary is gorgeous. What you did is actually a split complementary with the 2 complementary colours being 2 steps away from the direct complementary instead of 2 and what blows my mind is that it works too! I tried this with other combos and it works so well! Imagine the possibilities wow mind blown!!

This video is just what I needed! Omg just getting into watercolor painting and colors (seriously) for the first time and it’s been kinda overwhelming. This video makes using and understanding color theory really easy for beginners like me! Thanks so much

Still here and talking about the fact there are so many colours in there makes me feel happy because I like specific mixtures to capture what I like.

Baby steps is very good advice. I tried to be a really good artist too early on and started losing confidence. Now I sketch and paint a little bit everyday and copied other work which helped me learn and now I’m just using my imagination and photos and from other little exercises I’ve done I’m starting to get better more than I thought I could be.

I am a knitter and found this helpful. Thanks