Primary Colors: Secondary Colors: And if you remember biology classes, you know that the human eye has rods and cones in the retina. The rods in your eyes help you perceive light, that is, it helps convert the light energy into electrical and chemical stimuli that can be processed by the brain. The latter, the cones in the eyes, are the color receptors and help us in distinguishing things like texture and details of materials. Moreover, human eyes have three types of cones, meaning we have trichromatic color vision. We’ll get back to why this is important later.
Types of Colors
What are primary colors? Let’s rewind a bit to primary school. Primary colors are those that are the most basic colors found, these three are the foundation of other colors in the color spectrum. The light given by the sun is white and the primary colors mentioned above are derived from white and are hence known as primary colors. These three colors are mixed in different quantities to get different colors and shades. When mixed in equal quantities, we get secondary colors. Like,
Red and yellow result in orange.Yellow and blue result in green.And blue and red result in violet.
What are secondary colors? We get secondary colors when we mix two primary colors. Orange, green, and violet are secondary colors. Secondary colors are the result of two primary colors mixed in equal quantities. What are tertiary colors? Tertiary colors happen when one or more primary colors are mixed with one or more secondary colors. Like, yellow-orange, red-purple, blue, green, etc. Different quantities of each result in a different color of shade. Like peach, peacock green and peacock blue, pine, puce, and pumpkin. And more rare colors like mauve, periwinkle, vermilion, celadon and glaucous, and many more. Why is this important? All of this information on primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors is important to understand another concept, warm, cold and neutral colors, and how certain things can affect the brains’ ability to distinguish and allocate color to objects. If you remember from a few paragraphs up, the human eye is trichromatic, meaning that we interpret three main colors and our perception of color depends on how many and how much of a certain color or colors are mixed to make that particular color. But the color of something is not the only factor, our eyes take into account the lighting, the texture, saturation, and distance among a few things to decide what we are seeing. Colour perception is a very complex thing as not all humans experience it the same. Like color bling people, there are three different types of color blindness: monochromatic, dichromatic, and anomalous trichromatic. Everyone with the condition of monochromatism sees in black, white, and various shades of grey. Dichromatic blindness affects the eyes’ ability to see one primary color, hence affecting how most colors with that blocked color are perceived. While anomalous trichromatic is the implementation of normal color vision. And sometimes some colors don’t even exist! These colors are called forbidden colors, their main color constitutes of foundations that either cancel each other out or the brain is unable to perceive it properly. The limitation occurs due to the inability of the eyes to see the wavelength simultaneously. For example, the color magenta does not exist in nature. Magenta is in a certain way opposite to green. It is the combination of blue and red, primary colors that are at the opposite end of the color spectrum. Since our eyes are not capable of differentiating between a certain range of frequencies, anything that is not green is allotted as magenta in our brain by our eyes. Hence, things like plants and leaves are shown as green to us by our brains and anything that we know is not inherently green but has the same wavelength as magenta. Warm Colors Warm colors are reds, yellows, and oranges, and shade in between. It has two primary colors, red and yellow. Orange is the color you get when you mix red and orange in equal quantities. More red give a deep orange and more yellow results in a lighter orange. Cool Colors Includes green, purple, and blue and their variations. Blue is the only primary color in the cool spectrum. Green is the combination of blue and yellow whereas purple or violet is the combination of red and blue. Neutral Colors Neutral colors consist of black, white, and browns. Adding white to any color results in a lighter shade of the same color. Like mixing white in a deep blue might result in cerulean or sky blue depending on how much white is added. Whereas, adding black to any color deepens or darkens the same color. Like adding a bit of black to green will result in forest green or adding more black to it will result in dark green. Adding brown in a certain color will dull or subdue it. Make it more muted than it originally is. Remember that green is a secondary color made up of yellow and blue, both of which are primary colors, add red to it, then you have all the primary colors, which results in a natural color.
What do you get when you mix red and green?
While theoretically the primary colors are derived from white light, adding all the primary colors will not result in the color white. Practically if all primary colors are mixed, it will result in brown. Hence red and green when mixed results in brown, since red and green make up for all primary colors. All these color mixing techniques are especially important to color theory, psychology, and human behavior.
