RYB denotes the use of red, yellow, and blue pigments as primary colors in art and applied design. Under traditional color theory, this set of primary colors pigments was advocated by Moses Harris, Michel Eugène Chevreul, Johannes Itten and Josef Albers, and applied by countless artists and designers. The RYB color model underpinned the color curriculum of the Bauhaus, Ulm School of Design and numerous art and design schools around the world including the Shillito Design School, Sydney, and Parsons School of Design, New York. The RYB Color model features red, yellow and blue. These overlap to create Secondary color segments of orange, green and purple, which in turn overlap to reveal a Tertiary color created from orange, green and purple: brown. This set of primary colors emerged at a time when access to a large range of pigments was limited by availability and cost, and it encouraged artists and designers to explore the many nuances of color through mixing and intermixing a limited range of pigment colors. In this context, red, yellow and blue pigments were usually augmented with white and black pigments, enabling the creation of a larger gamut of color nuances. The RYB color model relates specifically to color in the form of paint and pigment application in art and design. Other common color models include the light model and the printing ink CMY color model, the latter emerging in conjunction with the CMYK color model in the printing industry.
History
The first known instance of the RYB triad can be found in the work of Franciscus Aguilonius, although he did not arrange the colors in a wheel. Jacob Christoph Le Blon was the first to apply the RYB color model to printing, specifically mezzotint printing, and he used separate plates for each color: yellow, red and blue plus black to add shades and contrast. In 'Coloritto', Le Blon asserted that “the art of mixing colours… painting can represent all visible objects with three colours: yellow, red and blue; for all colours can be composed of these three, which I call Primitive”. Le Blon added that red and yellow make orange; red and blue, make purple/violet; and blue and yellow make green. In the 18th century, Moses Harris advocated that a multitude of colors can be created from three 'primitive' colors - red, yellow and blue. Mérimée referred to "three simple colours " that can produce a large gamut of color nuances. "United in pairs, these three primitive colours give birth to three other colours as distinct and brilliant as their originals; thus, yellow mixed with red, gives orange; red and blue, violet, and green is obtained by mixing blue and yellow". Mérimée illustrated these color relationships with a simple diagram located between pages 244 and 245: Chromatic Scale.De la peinture à l’huile : ou, Des procédés matériels employés dans ce genre de peinture, depuis Hubert et Jean Van-Eyck jusqu’à nos jours was published in 1830 and an English translation by W. B. Sarsfield Taylor was published in London in 1839. Similar ideas about the creation of color using red, yellow and blue were discussed in Theory of Colours by the German poet, color theorist and government minister Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast by the French industrial chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul discussed the creation of numerous color nuances and his color theories were underpinned by the RYB color model. Separate to the RYB color model, cyan, magenta, and yellow primary colors are associated with CMYK commonly used in the printing industry. Cyan, magenta and yellow are often referred to as "process blue", "process red", and "process yellow".
