Colour Theory: The Truth About The Colour Wheel

I have only used cyan, magenta, yellow and white paint for several years now. Daler Rowney, Winsor & Newton, and even Sennelier produce acrylic and oil paints in "process" colours - ie. the same colours as the CMYK printing process. I don't even need to use black because if you get the correct proportions all three colours make black - in fact a far richer, colourful black than one from a tube of black. It's a brilliant way of creating the exact colours you want, and I don't have to carry a great sack of paints with me - just the four tubes! Thank you - I enjoyed your video.

I love how this treated like a big conspiracy.

Good work, Scott. I also teach art and find it difficult to teach people about primary colours because they are stuck on the idea that they MUST be red, yellow and blue... even when I do a quick hands-on proof like you did in your video.

Very Clear! As a secondary physics teacher in the US, I always struggle trying to convince my students that the entirety of their elementary art education was a lie. (And now that I teach it, I know why creating purple was always so hard for me when I was young!)

Congratulations! For the first time I saw someone speaking the truth about the primary colors. When I was a child I was taught wrong about the colors in school. I enjoyed painting since I was a child and did not understand why when mixing red and blue I got some kind of brown, not purple as they said I would get. Today I use Carmin which is very close to Magenta, also use Prussian Blue that is close to Cyan.

Very informative. I was a painting major in college, a graphic designer for a living, and most recently, a screenprinter. Needless to say, in the offset print world, the premise behind CMYK is unchallenged. As a screenprinter, though, I see people try to get a good rich pink by mixing a bright red with white, which can't be done. Magenta in white is what works. Cyan and yellow for a bright green. Odd that this concept hasn't been applied to painting before.

Thank you! I have always painted a very monochrome or subdued pallete but recently was trying to revisit colour theory and could not paint a colour wheel. Coming up with a similar conclusion about primaries not being primaries!! What a revelation.

Might be the best color theory video I've ever seen, impressive and also entertaining

I notice lots of people are confused!!! Good job Scott, everything is correct. Primaries are Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Black is for Shading, White is for Tinting and the mix of BW (different grades of Gray) is to get color Tone. Obviously you can obtain Gray even without using Black, by adding a color's opposite on the color wheel, and that makes sense if you think that mixing 100% of all the primaries will give you Black. Blue and Red aren't primaries, if you use them as primaries you'll get dark and dull colors. Hope you video awakens the most!

YOUR AN ABSOLUTE CHAMPION, Best video ever. It was hard to find this authentic info, i was taught years ago but needed to refresh as i attempted a colour wheel...to replace my original done 10 years ago, as i misplaced it, done with daler and rowney gouache...but couldn't understand what i was doing wrong.....im all better now...fantastic... thanks for creating this!

Well, I am glad that yellow is still holding it's ground, but I feel its time is short.

Interesting idea. But it's still not even that cut and dry. Color theory yields a deeper rabbit hole to get into vs. what most classes on the subject start to cover. Subtractive colors can get shifted around even a little more, as there are still some more factors to consider. Translucent vs. opaque colors behave differently when layered or mixed. (Which is why what you're explaining in this video is more common in printing processes with translucent colors vs. painting and you'll keep getting those same old arguments. Also why tempura, water colors, acrylics, and oils behave differently, and not just from a material perspective.) Some pigments are mixed with black or white to shift the shade instead of their complimentary colors. Different paints shift intensity differently when they dry. (Lighter/darker or more/less saturated.) And then you have phosphorescence or fluorescence in some cases, where a pigment absorbs light but re-emits it on a slightly different wavelength. What it absorbs may make it stronger/brighter in another color. The nature of the bonding medium used with a pigment may even affect refraction, with iridescence in extreme cases. (Can give the appearance of an oily sheen, or those effects of mica or plastic purposely added.) And not to mention that environmental lighting is likely to drive the palette, as light is the source of the color we perceive. (Painting something while indoors under tungsten light vs. outdoors in sun can yield different results, and one wont necessarily look good in a different lighting situation vs. the other.) Because the way those things factor in with paints, RGB on the computer screen is often easier to predict than some of the things that can happen with paints. And that's with variation in gamma, color adjustments, and color bit depth that affect gamut. To sum it up, color wheels are merely a guideline. The way to really know is with experience in working with your particular medium.

That was a great video. It was incredibly informative and helpful. You really helped explain things in ways that were easy to understand, visually and orally. We are learning about this in psychology and I didn't understand the difference as well as I wanted to, but this was a huge help!

Love this! Thank you so much. It helps so much shifting colors in digital media in a CMYK workspace. Made my day Scott :)

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! This is THE MOST VALUABLE art tutorial I have ever seen and arguably the most valuable ever presented. I knew the traditional color wheel is wrong. I am not experienced enough to figure out the correct one. You are very generous to share this knowledge.

@5:00-actually the color was named after the fruit (Orange was originally called “yellow-red”).

Amazing video I have always struggled with the color wheel and this makes so much sense! Thank you so so much!

You have to be complimented for this Scott. As soon as I saw my kids struggling to mix paints according the traditional colour wheel theory, I went out and bought 5 large bottles of poster paint at discount prices. I selected the closest I could find to cyan, magenta and yellow, plus white and black. I took a design course and had to make a colour wheel. It didn't work as well with the schools paints as it did with my kids' paints. But, old ways die hard, no matter how easier the new ways are.

For all the reasons you just explained, I've used the Robert Burridge colour wheel. Now I understand why it works so well... PS. I taught both my kids the proper names of all the colours and the two of them constantly argue with friends and teacher. I love it!

There is no spoon! Loved this. The most clear, concise and helpful information. Wish I'd found you sooner, after my two days of brain ache trying to understand Munsell theory! Thanks, Scott x