Primary Colors & Secondary Colors

Pigments can be divided into two categories of colors: Primary Colors and Secondary Colors.

Primary colors refer to any set of colors that can create a secondary color. The most common and popular primary pigment colors among artists are Red, Yellow and Blue - which is very similar to Cyan Magenta and Yellow in the CMY model. However, any two colors that create another color can in fact be called a primary color. Secondary colors refer to any color created from two primary colors.

Secondary colors created from red, yellow and blue include:

Red + Yellow = Orange
Yellow + Blue = Green
Blue + Red = Violet

Portions of this post were adapted from the book:
Fundaments of Color - Shade Matching and Communication in Esthetic Dentistry published by Quintessence Publishing Co. Inc and written by Dr. Stephen J. Chu, Dr. Alessandro Devigus, Dr. Rade D. Paravina and Mr. Adam J. Mieleszko. and the Wikipedia articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/pigment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_color

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_colors