These are the four basic colors of ink used in printing color images.Ĭolor theory is the creative and scientific use of color. However, if printing is your ultimate goal, digital artists and designers can use, or convert files to, CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). The light source of a monitor or screen can create any color you can imagine with the combination of different shades of red, green, and blue. Typically, print artists use the RYB color model, as it’s best suited to illustrating the correlation between physical colors in inks and paints in the color mixing process.įor designers or artists who work in the digital medium, the RGB color palette is most typically used, as those colors are found in the photoreceptors of the eyes.
There are two types of wheels: one based on the primary colors of RYB (red, yellow, and blue) and one based in RGB color (red, green, and blue). Arranged in the order the colors appear in the light spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), Sir Isaac Newton created the first color wheel in 1666. It’s the standard tool for viewing and understanding color combinations.
The color wheel represents all visible colors.
