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

Red, yellow and blue are the primaries of subtractive mixing in the same sense that red, green and blue are the primaries of additive mixing.

Hints
  1. Ask which set a colour printer actually uses.
  2. One of the two sets is a workshop tradition rather than a result.
Show the answer

False

Why

False. The subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow, which is what every printing process uses. Red, yellow and blue is a studio convention inherited from the eighteenth century, and its limits are visible: an RYB palette cannot mix a clean turquoise or a clean pink at all.

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