Color Theory for Dummies

This is a short and simplified exposition of color theory that may be relevant for you when mixing the colors we sell in our webshop.

The point is that you can mix your way to different shades of color by using three primary colors. This is the same for the colors we sell in our webshop.

Basically, colors consist of light with different wavelengths. The wavelengths that make it to the color receptors in your eye are those that make you perceive a certain color.

To obtain different colors, you can mix the difference wavelengths (typically three primary colors). This can be done in two ways; either by adding or subtracting. When you add color, your starting point is no color/light = black. This is the method used for television and it is called additive colors. For the opposite case, where we subtract colors, the starting point is "all" colors = white light. This is called subtractive colors.

Subtractive colors

In this case, we focus on subtractive colors, as our colors consist of different color pigments that are mixed with AnyShape. This means that we are dealing with materials that absorb different wavelengths and that reflect these wavelengths that are not absorbed. The waves that are reflected are those you can see, while the rest of the light is absorbed in the material and converted to heat.

Why this is, does not concern this curriculum, but Wikipedia would like to explain it for you. Perhaps search for "Color system", "Subtractive colors" or "Absorption spectroscopy”.

Basically, the more color pigment present that can absorb the different wavelengths, the darker the result. This means that an infinite number of colors mixed together absorb an infinite amount of light, which will result in the object turning black. See the example below.