Red and Green Make Yellow

It's your first day at school and the teacher says 'I'd like you to paint a picture of where you live', so imagines Huw and this begins a dive into the topic of colour mixing.

Colour mixing is a widely misunderstood topic. In fact, it is not actually possible to mix colours per se. Colours are perceptions even though it often feels as if they are the properties of objects. What we can do is mix lights and we can mix colorants (dyes or pigments). When we mix lights we refer to it as additive colour mixing and when we mix colorants we refer to it as subtractive colour mixing. Understanding either requires some appreciation about how the cones (light-sensitive cells) in our eyes work. Because the key questions about colour mixing are not about what happens (for example, that red and green lights can mix to make yellow) but about why and even where it happens.

This podcast only scratches the surface of this fascinating topic. To dive in deeper you could look at Steve's video about colour primaries.