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The system of arranging colours in a circular spectrum demonstrates the principle of mixing two colours to obtain a third. Make orange by mixing yellow and magenta, green by mixing yellow and blue, and purple by mixing blue and magenta and on we go.

Hue is the attribute that distinguishes one colour from another. Tone is the position a hue holds on the scale from light to dark. Tints and shades are variations of tone. Intensity refers to how pure a colour is.

Primary colours are those which can be mixed to make all other colours. Primary colours can be Prismatic or Pigmented. Prismatic colours are produced by light and come in four hues: red, blue, green and yellow. Mix them together (by projection) and you get white. Pigmented primary colours are used in painting and have three hues: red, blue and yellow. Mix them together and you get black. Printers use cyan, magenta, yellow and black or CMYK.

Sit two colours side by side so they touch and they can create a third optical hue in our minds. Seurat put yellow dots next to blue dots so they appeared green from a distance. It was the discovery of perceptual colour mixing by Willhelm von Bezold that led to the CMYK printing process.

Tags: Bezold, black, blue, CMYK, cyan, green, hue, intensity, magenta, pigmented, primary colours, prismatic, projection, red, Seurat, shade, spectrum, tint, tone, yellow