Color Mixer

Red, yellow and blue together, or any complementary pair: orange and blue, purple and yellow, or green and red. Start with orange and add blue a little at a time - it is the easiest of the three to control.

Blue and yellow. More yellow moves it towards lime and spring green, more blue towards teal and forest green. Adding a touch of red mutes it into olive or sage.

Red and yellow. Equal parts give a true orange; more yellow gives amber and more red gives scarlet. Adding a little blue dulls it towards terracotta.

Red and blue. The result depends heavily on which red and which blue - a warm red gives magenta and a cool blue gives indigo. A touch of white lifts it to lavender.

Red and white. Pink is a tint rather than a mix, so the more white you add the paler it gets. A speck of blue makes it cooler, a speck of yellow makes it coral.

Paint is subtractive: each pigment absorbs wavelengths, and what is left over is what you see. Screens are additive: they emit light, so red and green light make yellow. Same colours, opposite arithmetic.

For paint and pigment, red, yellow and blue - they cannot be mixed from anything else. For printing it is cyan, magenta and yellow, and for screens it is red, green and blue. The right set depends on the medium.

The colour opposite on the wheel: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple. Placed side by side they intensify each other; mixed together they cancel into brown or grey.