Painting I / Colour as Pigment and Colour as Light
Practice question · Sort into groups

Sort each observation by the mixing system it belongs to.

Groups: Additive mixing of light · Subtractive mixing of colourant

Hints
  1. Anything that gets lighter as you add belongs to the light column.
  2. Anything that gets darker as you add belongs to the colourant column.
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Additive mixing of light: Red and green together read as yellow, All three primaries together give white, The primaries are red, green and blue

Subtractive mixing of colourant: The result is always darker than the darker of the two parents, A cyan and a magenta layer together return only blue, Enough mixing converges on a dark neutral

Why

The two columns are opposite in direction and identical in method: in both cases you are asking what survives. In light, everything survives and accumulates. In paint, only what both layers happen to return survives, and each new addition can only take away more.

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