What are the 3 primary pigments?

[kbuckland]

Hello all!

My mind has been racked with color theory latley. My current palette is the “Gruppe” palette, a warm and cool of each primary. I’v used it for about a year now and have been, for the most part, satisfied. However, I would like to expierement with a three color palette using only the primaries + white. Any suggestions on which three pigments would match the primaries the closest?

Thanks,
Kyle
http://www.kylebucklandfineart.com

[Eugene Veszely]

Depends on who you talk to

Some say Cyan, Magenta and lemon yellow … others have much better knowledge

My Website

[Helen Zapata]

Here is the Primary Palette CMY Project

This might help. It’s amazing what you can do with only the primary colors.

Helen

[Richard Saylor]

Depends on who you talk to

Some say Cyan, Magenta and lemon yellow … others have much better knowledge

I’ve tried that, and lemon yellow makes wonderful greens, but the reds (Magenta + Yellow) tend to be muddy. One of the main problems with three-color painting is getting good greens and reds. It tends to be a compromise, but I think a more neutral yellow works better than lemon.

I get good results in watercolor with W&N Quinacridone Magenta (PR 122), Winsor Blue GS (PB 15), and either Winsor Yellow (PY 154) or Transparent Yellow (PY 97). I’ve found these to work better than the primaries recommended by W&N (Permanent Rose, Winsor Blue RS, Winsor Lemon).

The jury’s still out on the best three primaries for gouache and acrylic. (I don’t do oils any more.) In any event, CMY has always worked much better for me than RBY.

C&C is welcome.
Richard

[kbuckland]

I appreciate the fast, friendly, and informative info. This is a wonderful website!Thank you,

Kyle

[Marc Sabatella]

I’d recommend searching out a rather long thread from a couple of months ago that started in this forum when I asked a similar question; the title was something about the color wheel, I think. The discussion went all over the place, but the gist of what I took from it is this:

We all learned in school that red, yellow, and blue were primaries because they can’t be mixed from other colors. This quite simply isn’t true.

The construction of the eye is such that it responds most directly to red, green, and blue; all other colors are intepreted by our eye as mixtures of these three. The three colors that that are most primary in terms of how our eye actually responds to them are cyan (which reflects equal parts green and blue), magenta (which reflects equal parts red and blue light), and yellow (which reflects equal parts red and green light). The reality is, no pigments actually behave this way at all, so the theory doesn’t apply as well as we’d like. In the real world, pigments what they reflect what they want to reflect, and it’s usually less than theory would prefer, so no combination of three pigments will enable you to mix everything. But a pigment that is more or less cyan colored, like phthalo blue, and a more or less magenta one, like one of the quinacridones, plus a yellow pigment like cadmium yellow lemon, will probbaly yield the widest range of colors of any three color palette you might pick.

Whether that’s enough is another matter. I personally found the violets I could get this way not intense enough – the phthalo was just too green – and also found it too hard to get the range of oranges I wanted, as the magenta was too blue. Not only was the fullest intensity orange I could get a bit weak, but there wasn’t a lot of room for error mixing the duller earth tone types of colors this way.

Now, combine this with the fact that phthalo blue is particularly difficult to work with – and there really aren’t a lot of other good options that are close to cyan in hue – and I pretty much gave up on this palette. I’m coming closer to something I like, though. Instead of phthalo blue, I am using ultramarine. Obviously, I get cleaner violets this way. It also gives my duller greens by default, which is almost always how I want my greens anyhow. For the relatively rare cases where I want a more intense green, I also have phthalo green on my palette, which I mostly use to “punch up” a green mixed from ultramarine and yellow. Also, to have an easier time with the oranges, I added a color between the magenta and the yellow. Right now, it’s naphthol. It’s a help, but it seems closer to the quinacridone rose than need be, so I may switch to cadmium orange. Or I might add – or switch to – a more orange leaning yellow than the azo/arylide yellow I’m using now. Because while oranges are easier now, they are still the hardest. Part of this is inherent in the nature of how we perceive color – slight changes in hue or intensity in the warm colors is perceived by our eyes as a much bigger difference than similar shifts in coolr colors. But I still not sure I’m encountering any major problems that I don’t think keeping my brushes a little cleaner when mixing oranges wouldn’t cure.

Oh, I also have burnt sienna on my palette, mostly for underpainting.

Marc Sabatella
http://www.outsideshore.com/

[cunparis]

Hello all!

My mind has been racked with color theory latley. My current palette is the “Gruppe” palette, a warm and cool of each primary. I’v used it for about a year now and have been, for the most part, satisfied. However, I would like to expierement with a three color palette using only the primaries + white. Any suggestions on which three pigments would match the primaries the closest?

Marc gave some good info. Also you might want to check out the book “Fill Your Oil Paintings With Color and Light” (I think that’s it) by Kevin MacPherson. He uses:

– cad yellow light
– alizarin crimson
– ultramarine
– pthalo green

he says to start with the first 3 and then add green later on (first learn to mix your own greens). I made a color wheel and I liked it. I held my wheel up to the paintings in his book and I could see my colors in his paintings. That was cool. Then I tried:

– cad yellow light
– cad red medium
– cobalt blue hue (PB29)

I found the oranges weren’t much better, the greens were the same, and the purple was very muddy. So I prefer the first palette. With the aliz crimson I could add a touch of yellow and get a good red. So then I tried:

– cad yellow light
– alizarin crimson
– cobalt blue hue (PB29)

I like this because the cobalt blue hue is slightly more opaque than the ultramarine, and mixes about the same. Not sure how real cobalt blue would work. I have already started experimenting with this limited palette and I like it. Colors are not as bright & intense as with a full palette, so I’m not sure I’d keep this palette forever. But I think it’s really good practice to use it for a while.

Kevin says in his book that if you use a full palette, you will typically find the closest color on your palette and use it, even if it’s not exact. When you have to mix all your colors from scratch, you’re more likely to get an exact match. This makes a lot of sense. Depends on how you like to paint. If you want to paint more expressionist, then you want real bright pure colors that don’t necessarily match the real colors.

-michael

[JamieWG]

Hello all!

My mind has been racked with color theory latley. My current palette is the “Gruppe” palette, a warm and cool of each primary. I’v used it for about a year now and have been, for the most part, satisfied. However, I would like to expierement with a three color palette using only the primaries + white. Any suggestions on which three pigments would match the primaries the closest?

Thanks,
Kyle
[url]www.kylebucklandfineart.com[/url]

Helen gave you a link to the CMY palette project, which tells you the manufacturers’ recommendations for the primaries in their brands. Perhaps doing a couple of paintings with those colors would be a good start for you.

The true primaries are cyan, yellow and magenta. As Marc said, these can sometimes be difficult to work with, but a wonderful learning experience. It takes a lot of mixing to get the *real* primaries under control. So, many elect a split primary of reds, blues, and yellows as you’ve been doing, or the McPherson palette. These are far easier to control, but are in fact not the true primaries in terms of color theory. (That may or may not matter to you in terms of practical applications.)

If you use alizarin, be sure that you’ve selected one of the permanent alizarins, rather than the fugitive alizarin crimson. Gamblin and Winsor Newton both make good ones, and I’m sure other paint manufacturers do also.

Jamie

Hudson Valley Painter[/url]
Hudson Valley Sketches -- Reviews/Lightfastness Tests/Art Materials [/url]
One year from now, you'll wish you had started today.

[Patrick1]

I’m sure most people here have seen this a zillion times, but here’s what Handprint has to say:

http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color4.html#primary

http://handprint.com/HP/WCL/palette5.html#primaries

http://handprint.com/HP/WCL/palette4c.html

[kbuckland]

Hello! Thanks again for the informative input. Here is my progress thus far: I tried Rose Madder, Cad. Lemon, and Pthalo. The range was impressive however the secondaries lacked in some places, namley the Oranges and Purples. I then decided to add the secondaries and switch my blue to Ultramarine sense Viridian is close in character to Pthalo Blue. So my palette consisted of Rose Madder, Cad. Orange, Cad Yellow Lemon, Viridian, French Ultra. Blue, and Dioxine Purple. With this I found a more structured solution, however I still could not get thoes nice clean warm yellows that I was used to with Cad Yellow Med. I am now using :

DioxinePurple RoseMadder CadOrange CadYellowMed

FrenchUltramarine

Viridian

CadLemon

-I guess it would be hard for an artist to be too picky when it came to his or her tools

My online gallery is mostly landscapes painted with the Gruppe Palette, however I plan to add two still -lifes to the gallery which are the results of this fourm and my expierements.Please visit.

Thanks again-
Kyle
http://www.kylebucklandfineart.com

[JamieWG]

Kyle, this is too funny. You and I have arrived at very similar palettes. I too added the secondaries (notably cad orange and dioxazine, plus phthalo green) to the true primaries, for the same reasons as you, then switched out the phthalo blue and went back to French Ultramarine and Cerulean blues because they were so much easier to work and not so “hot” in saturation. Next I ditched the phthalo green to go back to viridian. Then I added a mid-yellow cadmium. I go out with a full palette of about 35 colors, but the ones I use most are like your palette, plus a transparent red oxide and yellow ochre. I add in a cad red light for portraiture/figures too.

Be sure you check the permanence on your rose madder. Some are fairly fugitive.

Jamie

Hudson Valley Painter[/url]
Hudson Valley Sketches -- Reviews/Lightfastness Tests/Art Materials [/url]
One year from now, you'll wish you had started today.

[h20color]

Here is my input–to add to the mix

I use watercolor but I’ve switched to a clean secondary palette that leaves less chance of a muddy work using these colors. You can always add that particular color that you feel you need. I get bright colors less mud. You can dull the mix down by adding it’s correct complement or the old standby Payne’s Gray. This palette seems to offer the best of complementary colors. Any two complementary colors that make a pure gray will work.

This provides pure pigment for each of the colors and is pretty much balanced
PY=prim yellow, PB=prim blue, PV=prim violet, PR=prim red blah, blah, blah

Hanza Yellow (PY97)
Cadmium red orange (PR108)
Quinacridone rose (PV19)
Ultramarine blue (PB29)
Phthalocyanine cyan (PB17)
Phthalocyanine green YS (PG36)

Phthalocyanine turquoise (PB16) is close to a true cyan hue useful in landscape painting.

very close to some of the palettes listed.

Remember it’s just another option.

Silverpoint Article January 2004[/URL]

My Website

"They do me wrong who say I come no more when once I knock and fail to find you in; For everyday I stand outside your door and bid you wake and rise to fight and win.
Wait not for precious changes passed away! Weep not for golden ages on the wane! Each night I burn the records of the day---At sunrise every soul is born again"

--- OPPORTUNITY --- by W. Malone

[Bad Dobby]

Here is Stephen Quillers response to that question:

http://www.dick-blick.com/items/049/10/04910-0000-3ww.jpg

Also, this painters wheel is helpful too:

http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/IMG/cwheel.gif

Back in Canada, Thanks Everyone! The discussions have been entertaining and enlightening. Cheers! The truth is I am a devote Catholic, a female, Mexican/American, a student and mother ... and the Online world gives me a place to test the views of personalities around me everyday. Online, we can be whoever we want to be right? Isn't that part of "the game?" Thanks for playing with me.

[MsLilypond]

I have read the closest to the true primaries, is hansa yellow, pthalo blue & quin. magenta. I got the information off handprint.com and even though the site owner uses watercolours the paint & pigment info should apply to any paint medium

my website: www.lilypondcreations.com

[cunparis]

I have read the closest to the true primaries, is hansa yellow, pthalo blue & quin. magenta. I got the information off handprint.com and even though the site owner uses watercolours the paint & pigment info should apply to any paint medium

I agree with those colors. My thought is that it’s nice to come up with a 3 color primary palette that includes colors you’d use a lot. I think that’s why cad yellow light, alizarin crimson, and ultramarine are so popular for the 3 color palette.

I’ve done a lot of experimenting and for my last painting I used cad yellow medium (hue), alizarin crimson, and cobalt blue (hue). I really like those three. The yellow medium is really bright, yet I can easily tone it down with a bit of white..

[Author]

Posts