The Painter in oil

Primaries and Secondaries. - As all the other shades of color are produced by the
combinations (over-lappings) of the waves or vibrations in the light rays from the
primary colors, we have a series of colors called secondaries, because they are made up
of the rays of any two of the three primaries: as purple, which is a combination of blue
and red. When dealing with light the secondaries are: shades of violet and purple from
red and blue; shades of orange red, orange, orange yellow, yellow, and yellowish green
from red and green; and bluish green and greenish blue from blue and green -the
character of the color being decided by the proportions of the primaries in the mixture.
These conclusions have been reached mainly through experiments in white light. The
primaries so obtained do not hold good with pigment, as I have stated, but the principles
do. It will avoid confusion if I speak hereafter of the combinations as they occur with
pigment, it being borne in mind that it is a practical fact that we are dealing with rather
than a scientific one.
In dealing with pigment the primaries are red, blue, and yellow, not green. Of course
the secondaries are also changed; and we have purple and violet shades from red and
blue, orange from red and yellow; and green from blue and yellow - all of which vary in
shade with the proportion of the, mixture of the primaries, as is the case with light.
Tertiaries. - Another class of shades or colors is called tertiary, or third; for they are
mixtures of all the three primaries, or of a primary with a secondary which does not
result from mixture with that primary. Tertiaries are all grays, and grays are practically
always tertiaries. If you keep this in mind as a technical fact, it will help you in
management of color. Grays are, to the painter, always combinations of color which
include the three primaries. The usual idea is that gray is more or less of a negation of
color. This is rot so.
Gray is the balancing of all color, so that any true harmony of color, however rich it
may be, is always quiet in effect as a whole; that is, grayish -good color is never garish. It
is very important that the painter should understand this characteristic of color. You
cannot be too familiar with the management of grays. If you try to make your grays with
negative colors, you will not produce harmonious color, but negative color, and negative
color is only a shirking of the true problem.
Grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of primaries and secondaries, that is,
modifications of the tertiaries, are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any,
but they are also more luminous; they are live color instead of dead color. Grays made
by mixing black with everything are the reverse, and should not be used except when you
use black as a color (which it is in pigment), giving a certain color quality to the gray that
results from it.
Complementary Colors. - Two colors are said to be complementary to each other
when they together contain the three primaries in equal strength. Green, for instance, is
the complementary of red, for it contains yellow and blue; orange (yellow and red) is
complementary to blue; and purple, (red and blue) is complementary to yellow.
The knowledge of complements of colors is very important to the painter, for all the
effects of color contrast and color harmony are due to this. Complementary colors, in
mass, side by side, contrast. The greatest possible contrast is that of the
complementaries.