Mixing Colors – Pigments

The primary colors of pigments are actually magenta (fuchsia), cyan (aqua) and yellow. They are actually the secondary colors we have learned in the beginning of this chapter. This way of mixing color is called subtractive color mixing.

It is called subtractive color mixing because instead of adding light together like on your computer screen, pigments are used to control which lights are being absorbed.

This means yellow pigments absorb blue lights and emit red and green light.

Cyan (aqua) pigments absorb red lights and emit blue and green light.

So when you mix cyan (aqua) and yellow pigments together; yellow absorb blue and cyan absorb red, leaving only green light to be emitted.

The more pigment you add, the less color you see. This is why if you tried mixing all color pigments you will get a blackish color. Because most lights are absorbed by the pigments in the mix.