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Okay, I'm pretty late to the party, but here we go. My field is illustration and art, and especially color theory is something that a lot too often is teached plainly wrong. I think it was in the 1950s when Johannes Itten introduced his book on colortheory. In this book, he states that there are three "Grundfarben" (base colors) that will mix into every color. He explained this model with a color ring that you will still find almost anywhere. This model and the fact that there are three Grundfarben is wrong.
There are different angles from where you can approach color mixing in art, and it always depends on what you want to do. When we speak about colors, we actually mean the experience that we humans have, when light rays fall into our eyes. So, it's actually a perceptual phenomenon, which means it is actually something that has small statistical differences from individual to individual. For example, a greenish blue might be a little bit more green for one person or a little more blue for the other.
Every color, however, has its opposite color. Everybody can test this. Look into a red (not too bright) light for some time and then onto a white wall. The color you will see is the opposite. They will cancel each other out and become white / neutral.
Ittens colormodel, however, is not based in perception. In this model yellow is opposed to violet, which might mix to a neutral color with pigments but not with lightrays. But even that doesn't work a lot of times. I mean, even his book is printed in six colors, even though his three basecolors are supposedly enough to print every color..
In history lot of colormodels have been less correct course. What is so infuriating is that in Ittens case, he just plainly ignored the correct colortheory that already existed (by Albert Henry Munsell) and created his own with whatever rules that he believes are correct.
Even today, this model and rules are teached at art schools and you can see his color circle plastered all over the internet.
Tldr: Johannes Ittens colormodel is wrong, even though it's almost everywhere.
(Added tldr)
Fun fact:
OKLab which was created recently by Björn Ottosson as a hobby project, is a pretty accurate perceptual colorspace. It is open Source and has been adapted by Photoshop for Black and White conversion.
I kinda hope painting apps will also impliment it as a standard model for colopickers.
Can you post examples of what correct and incorrect models look like?
Itten
Munsell
The colormodel of munsell, for example, takes into account that some light waves have the same energy, they are experienced in a different brightness. >Helmholz-Kohlrausch effect
The Color model is dependent on what you want to do with it but in Ittens case, it doesn't even help with pigment mixing nor as a perceptual representation.
I'm sorry I've really tried to understand what your position is but I can't wrap my head around it. I find this really interesting but I don't understand it, are you willing to help?
Itten is "normal" RYB color wheel, yes?
Can you ELI5 how Munsell is different? The graphic you linked pretty much looks like it showed the same RYB archetype, with some layers and different levels of brightness... Isn't that just RYB with extra steps?
Here's some things that might help us meet in the middle:
-I understand radio/light/EM spectrum/frequencies/amplitudes
-i struggle with concepts of hue, contrast, brightness, luminosity, flux
-i am not an artist at all. I have pretty strong aphantasia - I'm not sure if that's relevant but it seems like it might be in this case so I'll mention it here
Sure. Colors are a huge topic and I'm not a physicist. There are a lot of colorsystems, and I probably don't know half of it, but I try to break it down.
There is no real "normal" colormodel. We just sort colors on a chart that fits our needs the best.
The color model you will see most often is, for instance, in Photoshop the HSV model. (Hue, saturation, value). It's good but has its own flaws with the color brightness.
In Ittens and Munsells case, you can see a small difference in the colors that are opposite of each other, in both colorwheels. In munsels case, yellow is opposed to indigo. In ittens case yellow is opposed to violet.
itten
Munsell
That's a small but significant difference. Opposing colors should combine into grey and not into other colors. In ittens case they don't.
Munsell is closer to a perceptive color space that takes into consideration that colors have different value and chroma levels, and vivid yellow is brighter than a vivid indigo.
Itten only used the flat ring model and lost the value and brightness of colors.
Now I compare those two because they are from the same time period, and Ittens model even came a little later.
Munsells color model even holds today.
Thanks for entertaining my struggle. I get it now.
When I referred to itten as "normal" I was making reference to its prevalence (which seems to be something that peeves you, given its inaccuracy), but I think it's so prevalent because it's so damn simple. I had to read and re-read your posts and look at your graphics in order to understand what the various layers were signifying, but the flat itten wheel is easy as pie to comprehend to the point that it's taught to children in preschool. I've never really needed any more depth of understanding in my day to day life since then.
Like many models, the simplest are often very inaccurate on a technical level. As a layman the difference between indigo and violet and purple and blue green or whatever are unremarkable in most cases, so the slight yet important difference of which is across from yellow on the wheel doesn't seem significant, until you showed an example of how they mix.
I can see why it bugs you if you have experience in a field that uses color theory as part of its toolkit. For me I've always just needed to know the bare minimum of RGB vs CMYK or whatever.
What would you prefer to see, that there's just better education about colors once people are old enough to get some more nuance?
Glad I could help.
That is true, and I get that it should be simple for children. But that doesn't mean that the foundation has to be incorrect.
Just using the simplified version of a correct layout like I showed you should be the way to go in this case.
Of course, most people won't need to know what's colorsystems there are. Itten is none of the less still teached by artschools even though it is this incorrect simplified version of a color space. At that advanced stage, there is no need to stick to a simplified version, let alone a one that doesn't lead to correct results.
Ittens model is just a remnant of its time. And it keeps being shared because of that simplification. But hey, that how history sometimes goes.
I think that's pretty crazy that itten is taught in art schools of all places, except maybe as an example of how models have different strengths and weaknesses, to spark a deeper acknowledgement of the color space in general (as this conversation did for me).
The good news is that now there's two of us. Cheers!