Painting I / Colour as Pigment and Colour as Light
Practice question · True or false

Cyan and yellow paint mix to green because green is the only band that both pigments return.

Hints
  1. Work out what each of the two absorbs.
  2. Cyan returns green and blue; yellow returns red and green.
Show the answer

True

Why

True. Cyan absorbs red and returns green and blue; yellow absorbs blue and returns red and green. Green is the only band left standing after both, so green is what comes back. That reasoning is the whole of subtractive mixing and it works for any pair once you know what each absorbs.

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