Editing Primary color (section)

=== Mixing pigments in limited palettes ===
{{main|Paint mixing}}
[[File:Självporträtt av Anders Zorn 1896.jpg|thumb|upright|An 1896 self-portrait by [[Anders Zorn]] clearly showing a four-pigment palette of what are thought to be white, [[yellow ochre]], [[vermillion]], and black pigments<ref>{{cite book |last1=Harrison |first1=Birge |title=Landscape Painting |date=1909 |publisher=Scribbner |page=118 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bCdNRQ20kTYC |language=en |quote=The expert cannot be bothered with useless pigments. He selects the few that are really essential and throws aside the rest as useless lumber. The distinguished Swedish artist, Zorn, uses but two colors—vermilion and yellow ochre; his two other pigments black and white, being the negation of color. With this palette, simple to the point of poverty, he nevertheless finds it possible to paint an immense variety of landscape and figure subjects.}}</ref>]]

The first known use of red, yellow, and blue as "simple" or "primary" colors, by [[Chalcidius]], ca. AD 300, was possibly based on the art of paint mixing.<ref>Kuehni, Rolf G. "Development of the idea of simple colors in the 16th and early 17th centuries". ''Color Research & Application'' 32.2 (2007): 92–99.</ref>

Mixing pigments for the purpose of creating realistic paintings with diverse color gamuts is known to have been practiced at least since [[Ancient Greece]] (see [[#History|history section]]). The identity of a/the set of minimal pigments to mix diverse gamuts has long been the subject of speculation by theorists whose claims have changed over time, for example, Pliny's white, black, one or another red, and "sil", which might have been yellow or blue; Robert Boyle's white, black, red, yellow, and blue; and variations with more or fewer "primary" color or pigments. Some writers and artists have found these schemes difficult to reconcile with the actual practice of painting.<ref name=gage_apelles>{{cite book |last1=Gage |first1=John |title=Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction |year=1999 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-22225-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oq_GtjmoTNgC&q=color+and+culture&pg=PA7 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|29–38}} Nonetheless, it has long been known that limited palettes consisting of a small set of pigments are sufficient to mix a diverse gamut of colors.<ref name="Boyle1664">{{cite book |last1=Boyle |first1=Robert |date=1664 | publisher=Henry Herringman|title=Experiments and Considerations touching Colours |page=220 |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14504 |quote=But I think I may easily be excus'd (though I do not altogether pass it by) if I restrain my self to the making of a Transient mention of some few of their Practices about this matter; and that only so far forth, as may warrant me to observe to you, that there are but few Simple and Primary Colours (if I may so call them) from whose Various Compositions all the rest do as it were Result. For though Painters can imitate the Hues (though not always the Splendor) of those almost Numberless differing Colours that are to be met with in the Works of Nature, and of Art, I have not yet found, that to exhibit this strange Variety they need imploy any more than White, and Black, and Red, and Blew, and Yellow; these five, Variously Compounded, and (if I may so speak) Decompounded, being sufficient to exhibit a Variety and Number of Colours, such, as those that are altogether Strangers to the Painters Pallets, can hardly imagine.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rood |first1=Ogden |title=Modern chromatics; students' text-book of color, with applications to art and industry. |date=1973 |publisher=Van Nostrand Reinhold Co |location=New York |isbn=0-442-27028-3 |pages=108|url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd0001/2010/20100701001mo//20100701001mo.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170118111614/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd0001/2010/20100701001mo/20100701001mo.pdf |archive-date=2017-01-18 |url-status=live |quote=It is well known to painters that approximate representations of all colours can be produced by the use of very few pigments. Three pigments or coloured powders will suffice, a red, yellow, and a blue; for example, crimson lake, gamboge, and Prussian blue. The red and yellow mingled in various proportions will furnish different shades of orange and orange-yellow; the blue and yellow will give a great variety of greens; the red and blue all the purple and violet hues. There have been instances of painters in water-colours who used only these three pigments, adding lampblack for the purpose of darkening them and obtaining the browns and greys.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal
| last1   = Nyholm
| first1  = Arvid
| title   = Anders Zorn: The Artist and the Man
| journal = Fine Arts Journal
| date    = 1914
| volume  = 31
| issue   = 4
| pages   = 469–481
| doi     = 10.2307/25587278
| jstor   = 25587278
| quote   = It is true that Zorn uses only a very limited palette, especially when he paints indoors, when he considers that black, white, red and yellow should be enough for all ordinary purposes, except when a very decided color is present, as, for instance, a light blue or a positive green in a drapery.
}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Munsell |first1=Albert H. |title=A Color Notation |date=1907 |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26054/26054-h/26054-h.htm |quote=Studio and school-room practice still cling to the discredited theory, claiming that, if it fails to describe our color sensations, yet it may be called practically true of pigments, because a red, yellow, and blue pigment suffice to imitate most natural colors.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lintott |first1=E. Barnard |title=The Art of Water Colour Painting |date=1926 |publisher=C. Scribner's Sons |page=25 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ycNNAAAAYAAJ |language=en |quote=For a young student there cannot be a better way of entering upon the study of water colour than by rigorously banishing all but two colours from his palette. It is the best and surest way to the study of full colour. The colours should be a cold and warm one; cobalt blue and warm sienna—or Prussian blue and burnt sienna—are two combinations which lend themselves to a great variety of treatment.}}</ref>

The set of pigments available to mix diverse gamuts of color (in various media such as [[oil paint|oil]], [[watercolor painting|watercolor]], [[acrylic paint|acrylic]], [[gouache]], and [[pastel]]) is large and has changed throughout history.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Eastaugh |first1=Nicholas |last2=Walsh |first2=Valentine |last3=Chaplin |first3=Tracey |last4=Siddall |first4=Ruth |title=Pigment Compendium: A Dictionary of Historical Pigments |date=30 March 2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-37386-2 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Ball |first1=Philip |title=Bright earth : art and the invention of color |year=2002 |orig-year=2001 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |location=New York |isbn=0226036286 |edition=1st American}}</ref> There is no consensus on a specific set of pigments that are considered primary colors{{snd}} the choice of pigments depends entirely on the artist's subjective preference of subject and style of art, as well as material considerations like [[lightfastness]] and mixing behavior.<ref>{{cite web |last1=MacEvoy |first1=Bruce |title=handprint : learning color through paints |url=https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/intstud.html |website=www.handprint.com |access-date=27 April 2021}}</ref> A variety of limited palettes have been employed by artists for their work.<ref>{{cite web |last1=MacEvoy |first1=Bruce |title=palette paintings |url=https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/paletfs.html |website=www.handprint.com |access-date=3 February 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gurney |first1=James |title=Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter |date=2010 |publisher=Andrews McMeel Publishing |location=Kansas City, Missouri |isbn=978-0-7407-9771-2 |page=104 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MvddjqkQy9UC&q=%22limited%20palette%22 |language=en}}</ref>

The color of light (i.e., the spectral power distribution) reflected from illuminated surfaces coated in paint mixes is not well approximated by a subtractive or additive mixing model.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Haase |first1=Chet S. |last2=Meyer |first2=Gary W. |title=Modeling pigmented materials for realistic image synthesis |journal=ACM Transactions on Graphics |date=1 October 1992 |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=305–335 |doi=10.1145/146443.146452 |s2cid=6890110 |quote=Section 2 develops some of the significant differences in additive and subtractive color mixing and discusses the need for different mixing theory for pigmented materials.|doi-access=free }}</ref> Color predictions that incorporate light scattering effects of pigment particles and paint layer thickness require approaches based on the [[Kubelka–Munk theory|Kubelka–Munk equations]],<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lu |first1=Jingwan |last2=DiVerdi |first2=Stephen |last3=Chen |first3=Willa A. |last4=Barnes |first4=Connelly |last5=Finkelstein |first5=Adam |title=RealPigment: paint compositing by example |journal=Proceedings of the Workshop on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering |date=8 August 2014 |pages=21–30 |doi=10.1145/2630397.2630401|s2cid=1415118 }}</ref> but even such approaches are not expected to predict the color of paint mixtures precisely due to inherent limitations.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Curtis |first1=Cassidy J. |last2=Anderson |first2=Sean E. |last3=Seims |first3=Joshua E. |last4=Fleischer |first4=Kurt W. |last5=Salesin |first5=David H. |title=Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH '97 |chapter=Computer-generated watercolor |date=1997 |pages=421–430 |doi=10.1145/258734.258896 |isbn=0897918967 |s2cid=3051452 |quote=In summary, the fact that the KM model appears to work so well could actually be considered quite surprising, given the number of basic assumptions of the model violated by watercolor. We suspect that while the results of the model are probably not very physically accurate, they at least provide very plausible physical approximations, which appear quite adequate for many applications.}}</ref> Artists typically rely on mixing experience and "recipes"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Powell |first1=William F. |title=1,500 Color Mixing Recipes for Oil, Acrylic & Watercolor: Achieve Precise Color when Painting Landscapes, Portraits, Still Lifes, and More |date=August 2012 |publisher=Walter Foster Publishing |isbn=978-1-60058-283-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RsGJFZs5yyIC |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=MacEvoy |first1=Bruce |title=handprint : basic mixing method |url=https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/mix.html |website=www.handprint.com}}</ref> to mix desired colors from a small initial set of primaries and do not use mathematical modeling.

MacEvoy explains why artists often chose a palette closer to RYB than to CMY:<ref>{{cite web |last1=MacEvoy |first1=Bruce |title=imaginary or imperfect primaries |url=http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color6.html#imaginary |website=handprint.com |access-date=13 June 2021}}</ref>{{unreliable source?|date=December 2024}} 
{{blockquote
|text=Because the 'optimal' pigments in practice produce unsatisfactory mixtures; because the alternative selections are less granulating, more transparent, and mix darker values; and because visual preferences have demanded relatively saturated yellow to red mixtures, obtained at the expense of relatively dull green and purple mixtures. Artists jettisoned 'theory' to obtain the best color mixtures in practice.}}
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