by Harold Sink

Created on: February 03, 2009

Technically speaking, a secondary color is comprised of two primary colors in even amounts. Green is the secondary color of yellow and blue. Orange is the secondary color of red and yellow, and purple is the secondary color of red and blue. Therefore, this concludes that blue, red and yellow are primary colors.

Sounds easy, huh. Well, these so called secondary colors are halfway between the primary colors on the color wheel. Thus, each secondary color is opposite one of the primary colors. If you were to draw a straight line from one secondary color to the other it would form a triangle. This would also be true of the primary colors.

Okay so what about all those other colors that you thought were secondary. Violet is actually between purple and red. Turqoise is not only between blue and green but is also going towards the white spectrum.

"So I can buy any red and yellow to make orange?" True, or so it would seem. Supposedly even amounts of yellow and red make orange. This is not true for all reds and yellow or even blue. Different companies have different hues for pure red, blue and yellow. Therefore, to mix the color of green you expect may take more blue than yellow.

The same goes for orange and purple. Fortunately, these diversified color companies have come up with individual names for these pure colors. Of all of them, Anita's colors are the only line that have true blue, red and yellow. Thus, you could more than likely mix these in even amounts to come up with green, orange and purple.

Secondary colors became important in defining other colors, and to aid in color mixing. Why? Okay, say you mix red and green. Is that not the same as mixing all primary colors? What is that color? Some say dark gray while others say it is black.

Then there is white. Think of all the colors you can create by just adding a little white to a secondary color. Mix the tinyest bit of black with a secondary color and watch it come more brilliant.

Secondary colors are also considered the complimentary color to the primary color opposite on the color wheel. So this would mkae yellow complimentary to purple. Hmm, gold and purple are royal colors. Blue is complimentary to orange. Aren't those colors to a football team? Then green is complimentary to red. Sounds like Christmas colors to me.

There is a purpose for calling green, purple and orange secondary colors. They help define other colors, help in finding two colors for a color scheme in a home or painting, and are comprised of primary colors.

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