1 — Red, Yellow, Blue Can’t Mix All Colors
The problem is simple: RYB doesn’t work the way we were told.
Modern color science, real-world pigment tests, and even basic mixing exercises all point to the same conclusion: Red, Yellow, Blue cannot produce the full range of colors humans can perceive.
RYB can’t make:
– Vivid greens
– Strong cyans
– Hot pinks or magentas
– High-chroma violets
– Many turquoise or teal hues
But despite this, RYB is still taught in schools and beginner books because: Mistake #1 → “It’s tradition.” We keep passing it down because that’s how we were taught. And then comes the second mistake…
Mistake #2 → Pretending “red = magenta” and “blue = cyan.” This is often used as a band-aid to “fix” RYB, but it creates more confusion than clarity. Cyan is not blue. Magenta is not red.
They behave differently, they mix differently, and they create different gamuts.
2 — The Real Primaries (At Least, the Closest We Have)
If we’re talking about the 3 primaries that produce the widest possible gamut, then the best modern choices are: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow — the CMY model.
They’re not “better because digital uses them”—it’s the opposite: Digital and print use them because they work. Color scientists weren’t trying to honor tradition. They ran the math, tested real materials, and asked one question:
Which three pigments produce the largest range of mixtures?
Answer: CMY, not RYB. This is why printers use CMY (plus black).
Does this mean CMY are the “true” primaries? Not exactly.
Calling them “true primaries” suggests RYB are false. But RYB is a functional limited palette (it still works) — it's just not a universal mixing system.
3 — And No, Primaries Are Not Colors That Can’t Be Mixed
Another myth: “Primary colors are pure and cannot be mixed from other colors.”
This is inaccurate even for CMY.
– Cyan can be mixed from phthalo blue + phthalo green
– Magenta can be mixed from cadmium red + mineral violet
– Yellow is probably the only one that truly resists being mixed from other colors
So even the “ideal” set fails the purity test. If we cling to the old definition (“primaries can’t be mixed from anything else”), then there are no primaries at all.
Which means we need a new definition.
4 — A More Accurate Definition of Primary Colors
Here’s the improved version:
A color is “primary” if: 1) It belongs to a set of colors used to produce a range of mixtures (a gamut), and 2) It cannot be mixed from other colors within that same set.
That’s it.
Under that definition:
– CMY works
– RYB works (depending on what you want to mix)
– Zorn palette primaries work (depending on what you want to mix)
– Any custom 3-color system works (depending on what you want to mix)
It also means that the primary colors can be more than three. They can be four, five or six: an artist who has six colors on his palette, actually has six primary colors.
The notion of a “primary” still works, as long as we don’t try to make it a universal fit. Each time you pick up pigments to mix a color, they are the primaries for this given mix. Primaries are not magic colors. They’re simply the colors you start with, not colors that must be pure and all-mighty in some universal sense.
Final Thoughts
The moment you let go of the RYB myth, color starts making sense again. You understand why your purples look dull. You understand why your greens refuse to pop. You understand why magenta behaves differently than red.
The problem is not just about RYB. It’s the whole notion of a primary color that we get wrong. My recommendation is to forget about it and, instead, get a nice variety of pigments that cover most of the color wheel. Which means that Red, Yellow and Blue are part of the set but are complemented by cyan and magenta and green.
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