Colour Wheel Confusion - Help! RGB vs RYB

[pixelherder]

I'm doing some digital painting lately and once and for all i need to sort out this problem

http://www.aidan-wilson.com/ASSETS/GRAPHICS/sketch/colour wheel.jpg

So whats the answer?

I think "technically" they're both correct, but visually they dont make sense.

You cant hold up a card with Red and Green complementary colours, and then say its incorrect when its on a screen.

It shouldnt matter how its produced only what you see...

...so does anyone have any advice. Even the blindingly obvious that i've probably missed...

[mtw]

Colors work differently with pigments and with lights. Comining light waves is an additive process (what you get is brighter), while pigment mixing is a subtractive process (you get a midtone between the two colors). I'm not sure if that made any sense to this discussion, though.

To answer your question, I believe red is always the complement of green. The red, yellow, blue color wheel is correct. Because when you look at a large green area and then close your eyes or look at a white area, you'll see red. So when dealing with color, only think about what human eyes see.

[lowpolymatt]

Red is the complimentary or green. If you want to find out about it, get some books on art history....impressionism...a lot of seurat's paintings were based on using complimentary colours.

and hello mr.nevergetincontact!

[egerie]

You probably all know this already but I wanted to follow up a bit on mtw post.
The substractive synthesis is when you paint with paint/physical mediums like you pointed out. The more you mix pigments, the lesser the light and closer to black. The primary colours are : *MAGENTA*, BLUE, YELLOW.
In additive synthesis, which is when you work with light like spotlights on a stage, and to an extent digital paint, the primary colours are *RED*, GREEN, CYAN. The more you mix colours, the more light you have. And if you mix those 3 you get white.

To answer you, I think it's better to stick to subtractive colour theory.. (Oh no ! I turned into a conservative !:scared: ) Maybe we're more used to these contrasts or perhaps there's a scientific reason to all of this. There are some great books on the physics of colours that I need to get...

Out of topic but it might help ! :)

[pixelherder]

Thanks for the replies - after a long sleepless night, i came up with some stuff that should settle this for once and for all...until i forget it all again

If anyone else is interested, then here's some good stuff.

colour theory (by socar myles)
http://www.epilogue.net/art/tech/socar_color/

general colour theory - very informative
http://studioproducts.com/theory.html

and a fantastic general tutorial by prometheus right here on conceptart
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3148

And as for you Mr. Lopoly, i'll deal with you later!

Cheers!

[lowpolymatt]

Later...always later....get off your fat ole lazy @$$ and tell me if you've got a job yet muppet!

[pixelherder]

Originally posted by lowpolymatt
Later...always later....get off your fat ole lazy @$$ and tell me if you've got a job yet muppet!

thats exactly what i did - but seems you didnt notice you got an IM. Go on, LOOK!

[pvrhye]

The Answer you are looking for here is the difference between additive and subtractive color. Your monitor directly spits light back at you while your paints reflect colors. It gets a bit funny from there.