Observational Logic and the RYB Color Wheel

By Bartolomeu Velho - Own work, Public Domain

Humans are famous for our observational logic, but you don't have to take my word for it - just check out this illustration by Bartolomeu Velho, 1568 showing Earth at the absolute center of our universe. Look up at the sky and notice the moon, the sun, the planets, and all the stars appear to rotate around us here on Earth. This is exactly where the idea in the illustration above comes from, the observation of heavenly bodies seeming to rotate around us, and this view of our world was described by Ptolemy around 170 AD.

Photo source: public domain via Wikicommons

This geocentric view persisted well into the 1600s, like this view of our galaxy from Andreas Cellarius' 1660 book of star charts. When you look at these diagrams today, you know this does not represent our current view of the universe, and you inherently understand these as a snapshot of an earlier time in human history. A time before scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton helped shift our understanding of the world around us.

Heinrich Hammer the German

World maps made by Europeans diagramed Earth as the British islands on the left, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Japanese islands on the far right. This shows a snapshot of human history before Europeans that were making these maps were aware of an entire continent on the other side of the globe. When you see one of these maps, you know pretty quickly what's going on here - you aren't under the impression that this is actually Earth as we know it. Again, these maps are a perfect example of human observational logic; a way of making assumptions based solely on what you see, or observe, of the world around you.

The red, yellow, and blue color wheel, the one that we're all so familiar with as a tool for studying color relationships, color harmonies, and color combinations is also created from human observational logic. And as such, this three pigment primary red/yellow/blue color system is also a snapshot of an earlier time in human history, one where pigments based in nature (mineral, animal, or vegetable) or basic alchemy were observed to behave in certain, predictable ways.

Nubian Tribute Presented to the King, Tomb of Huy, detail, center section, by Charles K. Wilkinson

Look at any painting from the time of the ancient Egyptians through the 1600s and you'll see a palette of very similar pigments; earthy reds, yellows, and browns, a handful of blues, a few yellow colors, and a handful of greens.

The blacksmith, Philips Wouwerman, 1600s

Scientists analyzing pigments figure the Egyptians had about 40 pigments to work with, and in the 1600s painters had about 100 pigments to choose from, but all within a similar palette of black, white, browns, basic reds, yellows, blues, and greens.

During this time period, humans observed the way in which these pigments appeared to behave in painting, and painters begin to record these observations that included things like:

• There doesn't seem to be any other pigments available that will mix to create a red color. Same for a yellow color and a blue color. These colors must be special!
• It seems like you can make mixes in various combinations of red colors, yellow colors, and blue colors that make new looking colors. In fact, using a red, yellow, and blue color, you can make a whole bunch of other colors.

Based on these observations, a simple system was created where the three special colors of red, yellow, and blue became the first, or primary, colors in the system. This would be known as a THREE PIGMENT PRIMARY system, as it uses just three pigments as a starting point to mix and make all the other colors within this system. This three pigment primary RYB (red, yellow, blue) system could be illustrated in a simple diagram, below.

Moses Harris (1731-1785)

You can find early examples of the RYB system published in the 1600s, and you can trace the use of this system published by various artists (or scientists who were also painters, such as Moses Harris above) all the way into the 20th century.

However...

Something happened to change the nature of how pigments mix during the time period right before, and right after the turn of the 20th Century. Did you happen to notice, when looking at the paintings or illustration above, any colors you see today that are missing from these pictures? What about bright, vivid colors? What about magenta or fuchsia, or intense violets and purples? Well, these kinds of colors aren't represented in the RYB system because they hadn't been invented yet when humans created this system based on observational logic.

Monet - Nymphéas (Waterlilies), c.1914-17

Vincent van Gogh Irises 1889

Look at paintings from the Impressionists and you'll begin to understand what I'm talking about. You'll notice bright pinks, violets, yellows, and vibrating, intense colors not previously seen to humans. Thanks to the scientific and industrial revolution, new pigments start to show up in the late 1800s, and as manufacturing of paints is improved, they become quickly available (and affordable) to artists.

And suddenly, those old "rules" of the three pigment primary RYB system fell apart, because now artists observed:

• You can mix all different kinds of red colors using a vivid magenta, fuschia, or similar color with a bright yellow pigment. Reds CAN be mixed from other colors.
• In fact, you can use any number of pigments with a red hue, a yellow hue, or a blue hue to mix together and make other colors. Painters can choose which colors to fill their pallets with from literally hundreds of pigments, and rarely restricted themselves to only three.
• And as a matter of fact, in the early 20th Century that there are so many pigments available that it is  impossible to begin with just three colors and mix all the colors in tubes of paint that are available to artists.

So, what does all of this mean in terms of the RYB color wheel? It means that, when you are looking at a diagram of a three pigment primary RYB system, it is a snapshot of a historical time period BEFORE modern pigments were invented showing how these pigments were observed to behave. This system does not, I repeat, DOES NOT, represent our current research, science, and understanding of how modern pigments behave when mixed together.

• Researchers have proven that mixing the basic hues of red, yellow, and blue pigments illustrated in the historic RYB color wheel do not result in the same variety or vividness of secondary and tertiary colors represented in these color wheels. Using scientific instruments, researchers have documented how mixing these pigments begins to result in a slight dulling of the resulting colors - and the more you mix, the duller the results.
• Artists working in the field of painting with pigments, along with some researchers, are proposing using different color models as a predictor of how pigments will combine. These include the Munsell system or systems representing the human color process.
• Following the latest science and research, educators believe we should move away from a flat color wheel model and start to teach about the many facets of colors.

And that concludes today's lesson. If you haven't discovered the amazing resources at The Colour Literacy Project, please visit and check out the Education section! You'll find lots of basic information about color, including some of the stuff I've ranted about here.

Or, better yet, join me in one of my hands-on color classes to learn first-hand about how you are experiencing color as a human.