That's because this pure pigment leans away from Orange and mixes harmoniously with the cool pure Blue. In this model, the secondary colors are purple, orange and green. The RYB model can also be used in design. The RYB model is used particularly in painting the red, yellow and blue pigments form a standard artist’s color wheel. In this example, if you want to mix a rich Purple instead, use a cool pure Red such as Quinacridone Red. As the abbreviation suggests, this system uses red, yellow and blue as its primary colors. This result is only great if you actually want a rich Brown. In this case it's pure Blue + pure Orangey/Red. Brown is the neutralized result we get from mixing Complementary colors. In our example above, Cadmium Red is a warm pure hue, leaning toward Orange. Blue and Orange are Complementary Colors. As a result, there are many different pure Yellow, Red and Blue pigment paints available. Paint is manufactured with organic, mineral and chemical pigments. The secondary colors are orange, green, and purple. They are unmixed pigments that can't be created by mixing other colors. Secondly, all other colors found on the color wheel can be created by mixing primary colors together. To understand why, we need to look at paint pigments. A Primary Yellow, Red or Blue paint color usually refers to a paint that contains only one pigment.

For instance, if you mix Cadmium Red + Ultramarine Blue, you'll likely be sadly disappointed. If you were expecting a deep rich Violet (Purple), the resulting Brown will be a total surprise. The problem is paint pigment never works like that in real life. However, as I wrote in a previous Color Wheel post, color is not an exact science. So in other words, you could conceivably mix gazillions of colors with only three pure Primar y pigments of Yellow, Red and Blue. Of course that's what they teach us in school.

The color wheel primary colors