mixing colors?

Question

why is it that when you mix paint colors, you get brown, but when you mix light colors (or spin the color wheel) you get white? theoretically, all colors together make white, right? so where does brown come in when you mix paint colors?

Answer 1

This is how I teach it in my Photoshop class:

Pigments (like paint and ink) affect the color you see by *subtracting* wavelengths from white. Yellow ink or paint, for example, is subtracting the short wavelengths (the blues) of light.

Colored lights (like the elements in the computer monitor you are looking at right now) affect color by *adding* wavelengths to black. The blue phosphor on your monitor or TV set is adding short wavelengths (blue) to the light.

That's why things are usually printed on white paper (when there is no ink or paint, you see white), and computer monitors and TVs go black when you turn them off (no light of any wavelengths).

So if you mix a bunch of inks or paints together, you are subtracting more and more wavelengths of light, so things are getting darker and darker. Ideally, you would get black when you have mixed the primaries together ... but inks and paints are rarely pure ... so there is generally a brown tinge to it.

If you add a bunch of red/green/blue light together in your monitor or TV, you are adding more and more wavelengths, which gets brighter and brighter until you get white.

Answer 2

No, all colors mixed together give you brown (or black).
Brown (or black) is the combination of all colors, while White is the absence of color.
When you are using pastels, the colors "blend" themselves out because the concentration of white is greater in each of them, and then mixed together they become white. The small amount of colors added together make light brown (tan or creme) and mixed with a large amount of white, it's barely noticeable. When you spin the color wheel, your eye can no longer differentiate the colors, so you see white (absence of color).
When you mix red/green or purple/yellow, you always get brown. Think about it and you will see that green is blue/yellow, and purple and red/blue. So in both cases you are mixing all the primary colors: red, blue, yellow and this gives brown (or black) which is: all colors.

Answer 3

When you mix all the colors of light, you get white light. Just like a prism splits white light into its colors. That is transmitted color. In paint you are dealing with reflected light. In using a color wheel, blue and yellow make green, red and yellow make orange and blue and red make violet. 3 together make brown.Things are the color they reflect. They absorb the rest. Transparent objects transmit the color that they are and absorb the rest. It is the absorbing of the colors that causes paint to look brown.

Answer 4

pigments always come out darker when you mix them, its kind of the opposite of the way light colors mix.