Paint Mixing> Mixing lights can give you all the colors. But it’s. . . impractical! You can’t go around lighting everything with cellophane and flashlights! Luckily, paint comes in all colors, is easy to brush on, and doesn’t have batteries that wear out! But mixing paint colors together is completely, totally, entirely different from mixing colors of light.
Paints come in as many colors as you like. Each color of paint <#5383,9><!reflects> particular amounts of the rainbow colors of light to your eye. The color that you <#5384,15><!see> comes from the colors of light that bounce off the paint.
But what happens when you mix paint colors together? Let’s mix red, blue, and green paint. Oh dear! Instead of getting white, we got. . . a dark, ugly mess! Why?
Just like a red apple or a blue bird, paint reflects some colors of light, but not others. We say that paint subtracts, or takes away, some colors from the light, and bounces back the rest. For instance, red paint takes out green and blue light, and reflects only red. (Can you figure out what colors green and blue paint subtract?)
When we mixed all three paints, everything got subtracted! With no light to reflect, we got a very black color.
To mix paints together to make new colors, we must use special colors of paint that subtract only one color, and reflect all the other colors. These special subtract-only-one-color paints are called subtractive primary colors. Cyan subtracts all red light, and lets the other colors reflect. Yellow subtracts blue light, and reflects the other colors. Magenta subtracts green light, and reflects the other colors.
So how do we get red paint? Mix magenta paint with yellow paint. The magenta reflects the red and the blue colors of light. The yellow takes out the blue, which leaves only red! To get green, mix cyan with yellow. The cyan lets both green and blue light reflect back, but the yellow takes out the blue, leaving green!
