So how do you actually mix your own colours? I have been quite amused by references in wargames publications to a mysterious “colour theory” by professional figure painters, and the occasional references to a colour wheel. They want to keep the whole process deeply obscure – though in the main they use hobby paints themselves. Artists are no better – they all seem to have their own way of looking at things and make it all rather bewildering. The theory itself is in fact quite complicated if you really get into the more modern updates. But you don’t need to. You just need to know a few basic principles, and understand that they don’t always work.
First the bleeding obvious. We are talking about mixing pigments and not light. Mixing light is much simpler and better understood – and works in a totally different way. When you see colour charts you first have to ask whether it is about mixing light or pigment.
The next point is key: colour theory is based on the idea that any colour has three characteristics. First is hue – this is what the colour wheel in the illustration describes; more on that later. Second is chroma; this is how bright or dull the colour is; the wheel shows the hues at maximum chroma – their brightest (and lightest at full saturation, as chroma decreases the colour gets darker until you reach black, which is zero chroma). Colours in the real world are usually duller. Finally there is saturation – this reflects how pale the colour is; the wheel shows the hues at maximum saturation. Again in the real world, outside saccharine TV commercials or fairytale Hollywood epics, most colour is unsaturated, or at least appears so to our eyes.
The traditional theory of colour mixing is simply this: first decide what hue you are aiming at, and achieve it by mixing two primaries. Say you want to get a mid-brown (i.e between terracotta and yellow-brown); the hue you want is secondary orange in the colour wheel above; you get this by mixing a primary red (say Cadmium Red) with a primary yellow (say Cadmium Yellow) or you may have an orange pigment already (like…er… Cadmium Orange). Next you achieve the chroma you are looking forward by dulling it down. You do this by mixing in the “complement” of the hue: the opposite hue on the colour wheel. In the case of orange the complement is primary blue – so you mix in some of this (say Ultramarine) into your orange until you get the right brown. Finally you decide on the saturation – and mix in some white (Titanium White or Zinc White) if you want it unsaturated. Simples.
But there are a number of problems, both practical and theoretical. First a word on the 12 category colour wheel in the picture. This construction seems popular amongst American writers. It’s fine so far as the primary and secondary colours go – but somebody decided to call the intermediate colours between the secondary and primary “tertiary”. I want to kill that person. There should be a “threeness” about the use of the word “tertiary” and there is no threeness about these hues. They remain mixes of two primaries, just in different proportions to the mid-secondaries. They are secondary colours in my book. Tertiary colours should refer to mixes of all three primaries – i.e. the lower chroma colours which should be in the middle of the wheel. But the widespread use of this terminology has poisoned the chance of using “tertiary” in that way in the wider world.
Which is a pity, because there should be much more attention paid to these true tertiaries. They should fit in the middle of the wheel. There should be a series of concentric rings inside the one representing full chroma colours, showing the effect of mixing in increasing proportions of the complement. And in the middle, representing a mix of all three primaries in equal weights, it is black. I have seen colour wheels constructed like this in books, but nothing on the web that I can freely publish here. I also made one myself by actually mixing pigments, but after my house move, I can’t find it. The true tertiaries are important for hobbyists, because, as I have already pointed out, the bulk of the colours we want are lower-chroma.
Before I move on , though, I just need to deal with another aspect of colour theory and the colour wheel. That relates to composition – i.e. what colours “go with” others. This matters to artists – and there are various theories they can use if they want to (triads, warm and cool colours, etc). I have seen at least one hobby writer trying to invoke this use of the wheel. He suggested that each colour on the wheel goes with its complement, giving the pairings of red-green, blue-orange and yellow-purple. He illustrated it with some Gauls painted like American Football teams. Don’t try this when making wardrobe suggestions to your partner. The complement pairings provide maximum contrast in hue – or in other terms they “clash”. That works well in sports strips and jockey’s colours, but not so much elsewhere. Besides you get a pretty decent contrast between each of the primary colours (or the secondaries for that matter) without going the whole hog. Incidentally, if contrast matters, then lower chroma or lower saturation reduces contrast (if applied to both parts of a pairing), so increased contrast of hue becomes more significant. But the big point is that wargamers’ colour choices are dictated by things other than what goes with what – you want to make things look like an original. Perhaps we should pay more attention to colour the composition of our regiments and tables, but that invites a host of practical issues. When it comes to colour choices, intuition is a better guide than theory – it’s best to take inspiration from things you see in pictures, or tables you see in shows. Leave this part of colour theory well alone.
The theory I have just outlined was developed in the 19th century. Modern minds have examined it further, and tried to reconcile it with the better-understood mixing of coloured light. It rapidly started to fall apart. It turns out that different pigments have a tendency to cancel each other out, and the actual results of mixing them are far more complicated, and far more dependent on the individual properties of particular pigments. And then colour printer ink makers had to develop their own system. They found that magenta worked better as a primary colour than red, and cyan (on the green side of blue) worked better than blue. They also found the need to use black. For your interest I have found this modernised version of the colour wheel. The inner ring is the more traditional one..
This is interesting so for as an insight into how you turn pixels of light into printer ink combinations. No so useful for mixing artists’ pigments. The there segments of green are very close. The traditional wheel was developed because it was practical, and it still is. But it is worth remembering that the “primaries” of red and mid-blue aren’t the last word. You can get a scarlet by mixing magenta with yellow, while it is hard to get a decent cyan by mixing yellow with blue.
Another thing is worth pointing out at this stage. Saturation affects our eye’s perception of the hue. If you mix white in with a fully saturated red, it turns pink, as every school child knows – pink is closer to magenta in hue than the original red. Also if you mix white in with deep blue, you get something that looks a bit like cyan. And if you mix white into orange you get close to the colour of Caucasian flesh, which looks pinker in hue. For this reason, artists don’t add in the white at the end. They decide on the saturation level early and mix it in from the start.
A further aside is that while you can achieve a lot in theory by mix three bright primary pigments and white, for hobbyists, who are aiming for dull colours, it is easier to start with duller pigments.
In summary the concepts of hue, chroma and saturation are useful, as is the idea of three primary hues. But the pigments can behave unexpectedly when mixed. It is time to meet the pigments.
Next time: the wargamers’ palette.
