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Creativity / Colors and combinations / Grade 5 / cc590

Light Mixing Is Not Paint Mixing

Compare colored light, printed ink and value without treating them as the same process.

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RGB means red, green and blue light. In the additive model, adding these lights can produce white. Paints and inks absorb parts of incoming light instead. Value means how light or dark something appears. Label colors so meaning is not carried by color alone.

Worked example

Red and green light together can appear yellow. This does not tell us that red paint mixed with green paint will make yellow paint: pigment results depend on the materials. Always name which mixing system you mean.

The RGB light model combines red, green and blue at full intensity to make white. Pigments absorb light and need a different mixing model.
Value means lightness or darkness. Labels keep meaning visible.

Two Different Materials

In an ideal RGB display model, full red plus full green plus full blue produces white, and all three at zero produces black. A printer commonly uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. For an offline experiment, make three pencil patches labeled light, middle and dark; notice value without needing colored pencils.

Question 1 What does the G in RGB stand for?
Question 2 In the stated ideal RGB model, what does full red plus green plus blue produce?
Question 3 Why should we not apply the red-plus-green light result directly to paint?
Question 4 Which art term describes lightness or darkness?
Question 5 How can a chart remain understandable when printed in grayscale?