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by Linda Carson

big black pig studio
98 King St. N., Waterloo Ontario Canada
www.bigblackpig.com

Secondary Colours

When you mix together two of the primary colours, you make a secondary colour. These relationships are fundamental to painters. For most practical purposes, the secondary colours are:

• Orange = red + yellow;
• Green = yellow + blue;
• Purple = blue + red;

The colour mixture between a primary and a secondary colour, such as reddish-orange, or bluey-green, is called a tertiary colour. I have yet to hear painters use the word "tertiary" in studio conversation, but it makes a nice vocabulary question in school.

Note:
The orange/green/purple notion of secondary colours is not the whole story. It's a practical simplification that works just fine for most purposes, and it is the answer everybody expects from you on the Art Vocabulary quiz. However, some readers worry about the gory technical details.

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