Color Mixing

This is a project I’ve been doing with Penelope (2). Give them two primary colors and let them go.

We’ve finished all three sets now, yellow/cyan, cyan/magenta, and magenta/yellow.

She likes all the little paint holes filled, and it gives more chances to mix up the true colors.

A pet peeve, although the three primaries are supposedly red, yellow and blue, with paint they are really the specific red yellow and blue of magenta, yellow and cyan (turquoise). Red and orange can both be mixed from magenta and yellow, but if you’ve tried to mix a really vibrant orange from red and yellow, it’s only sorta satisfying, and if you are trying to mix green, royal blue and yellow are totally unsatisfactory and give you a sort of washed out forest-y sort of green, whereas with cyan and yellow you can get a nice bright green. And yet, when you buy kids paint in ‘primaries’ you get the not so useful fire truck red, royal blue, and yellow. Why do you think printer ink comes in cyan, magenta, yellow and black? Yah. /rant.

Next up we will work on tints and shades. Yah, I’ve been re-reading Young at Art by Susan Striker.

Also, can you tell that I’m teaching Arts Focus at Rebecca’s school again? Things will be back to normal in a few more weeks.