Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green

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1. card_zeroJul 2024
   I'd mention the book Blue and Yellow don't make Green, which taught me that my minimum set of paints should be:

   * A purple-inclined red (crimson) and an orange-inclined red (scarlet)

   * A green-inclined yellow (practically speaking, "spring green") and an orange-inclined yellow ("yellow")

   * A purple-inclined blue (ultramarine) and a green-inclined blue (cerulean)

   * White to make light tones (don't worry about black)

   And these let me get almost all the spectral colors because, I think, the pigment grains don't interfere and don't cause subtractive mixing (there was some sketchy explanation about light bouncing between different pigment particles before bouncing properly back from the canvas). There are gaps due to the lack of any pure primary color, which we basically give up on being able to buy.

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2. beardywJul 2024
   Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green by Michael Wilcox covers the mechanisms behind subtractive colours (paints) pretty well. Also explains why it will never make a really bright green.
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3. robocatJul 2024
   > Blue and Yellow don't make Green

   Many children were incorrectly taught that Red, Yellow and Blue were "primary" colours from which you could make any other colour: wrong. Fotunately we have better teaching now.

   I like some of the comments here: https://nitaleland.blogspot.com/2005/10/urban-myth-blue-and-...

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4. PaulHouleJan 2022
   My first thought was to take the book "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green" from my shelf.

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2103727.Blue_and_Yellow_...

   You can't subtractively mix all colors from three practical 'primaries'

   If you mix Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine Blue you get something yucky and greyish. With Hansa Yellow and Cerulean Blue on the other hand you can get a good green but that blue won't make a good violet when mixed with Cadmium Red Light.

   The color mixing rules taught in elementary school don't really work and you need roughly 12 primaries to mix any arbitrary color.

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