The RYB colour model deals with a subtractive method of colour mixing, commonly used in traditional art and painting where opaque pigments are in use.
- The three primary colours in RYB are red, yellow, and blue.
- By mixing these primaries in pairs and in the correct proportions, artists can create secondary colours like:
- Orange (red and yellow),
- Green (yellow and blue), and
- Purple (blue and red).
- Overlapping all three primaries creates darker and more complex hues.
- While historically significant, the RYB model has been largely replaced by RGB and CMYK in modern digital design and printing due to the incompatibility of RYB with these technologies.
- Many commercial and industrial paint shops have adopted computer-based systems that rely on tinting or colour-matching machines that can accurately reproduce wide ranges of specified paint colours that exactly match colour swatches or colours identified using RGB, CMYK, LAB or Pantone colour values.
Related diagrams
Each diagram below can be viewed on its own page with a full explanation.
