The wrong information—Believed to be fact for several hundred years, widely accepted by the art community and published in many current text books: The Primary Colours for paint/dyes and inks are Red Yellow and Blue. The secondary colours are Orange, Green and Purple. Complementary colours can be found opposite each other on the colour wheel (a). The light spectrum – from infrared, to ultraviolet, represents our ability to see colour. We cannot perceive the lower end of infrared or the upper end of ultraviolet. Because of this, a complete spectrum would have each end disappearing into black. This is of some use in explaining colour but its value can be significantly increased by removing the black, placing it on a linear scale (b) and arranging it in a circle (c)  so that complementary colours are opposite each other. Scientists were aware of the properties of filtered light several hundred years before they fully understood the properties of dye, ink and paint. Newton proved that white light, e.g. sunlight, contained all of the visible colours and each of the many colours could be arrived at by mixing just three ‘primary’ filtered lights: Red, green and blue of varying strengths (as in the Television). Since all three added together equalled white, this was called additive mixing. The Definition for Primaries for additive (subtractive) mixing are defined as: 1. The three colours capable of making the most other colours 2. A primary cannot be mixed from any two other colours 3. The three added will equal white (black). What happens when white light strikes a coloured object (including dye, ink or paint) is very different. All of the colours are absorbed by the object except for its native colour which is reflected. For light mixing to hold true with paint, the three primaries need to be inverted (an inverted colour is a complementary colour). Because when these three were added the result was black, this was called subtractive mixing. In the 1670s Newton believed that the three were: Cyan (a greenish blue), Magenta (a bluish red) and Yellow; but at that early stage, was unable to prove it. Sadly, for artists, the then experts decided that the three were yellow, red (as in blood), and blue (as in royal blue); only yellow was correct. Because of this the legion of artists who have tried to work with just these three have never been satisfied with the result.    INCORRECT                     CORRECT The traditional Artist's colour wheel. In this version the centre has been inverted to show the complements, none of which are correct – colours opposite each other on the wheel should be complements. The Truth about Colour