Can you look at a non-primary colour and just 'know' what colours it is made of?

[AncientStudent]

Or do you have to work it out?

For example I can't look at purple and 'know' it's made of red and blue. I have to work it out by a process of deduction like a maths problem.

I'm not quite sure how you're thinking of this, but I can sort colours quite easily. Probably a result of my training years ago when working as a lab tech in a dye factory.

I can see very small changes in colour that most people would ignore, eg if a black had more yellow or more red in it.

Yes I can. I don't know if this is a case of 'just knowing' or a result of experience mixing paint from earliest childhood. Probably experience.

I can't imagine how you would work it out through a process of deduction.

Yes. Colours all have a place, to me.

Yes, but I've done graphics stuff for years so it may be learned rather than innately obvious I suppose. I can make a fair stab at the RGB values. E.g purple needs more blue than red; an equal mix is magenta.

I learnt it buy mixing paints at school. Didn't everyone?

No, I can't. DW can but I've always put that down to her having gone to art college.

I can. But then I did art at school

I know that purple is made of red and blue because I learned that at primary school. Same with green and orange. What else is there?

While I can see that purple is blueish red or reddish blue, green seems nothing like either blue or yellow to me. If I had never learnt from experience that blue and yellow make green, I don't think I would 'just know' this.

Very interesting question OP.

But pencils, what about turquoise or sea green type colours, or that acidy limey green of certain plants? You'd make the connection that way.

Yes. It's one of my utterly useless skills.
Also, colour makes me happy or bothers me more than is normal.

I can. How does your method work?

Green seems to have a very different quality to me. I know that's not logical - I can far more easily see how orange or purple work.

Blue + green = turquoise
yellow + green = acidy green

I would never have instinctively 'got' blue + yellow to make green in the first place though.

I see what you mean.
I used to paint a bit, and greens were always the hardest to capture.
A natural grass green is so difficult to mix.
I think it's because we're so attuned to natural colours that we can detect when its slightly off.

yeah, orange, green, purple, brown because we teach that in key stage 1.
Turquoise because it looks like blue-green. shades in between are just different ratios of the primary colours.

Thank you, really , really interesting answers.

I don't think my method is a 'method' as such - I see it more as a compensation for something that should be there, and isn't. To me it's almost a colour 'dyslexia' there is no coherent thread between colours for me. I have to google primary colours to know what they are. It feels like a bit I'm missing.

"I would never have instinctively 'got' blue + yellow to make green in the first place though."

I literally read this and went BLUE AND YELLOW MAKES GREEN???

Legitimately. It's not there in my head.

Yes I just know. I wouldn't call myself particularly artistic & have never studied art, but I can mix a colour quite accurately.

I find colour very easy to work with, and always score very highly in those daft online colour perception tests. I can tell minute differences between say coral, orange, and apricot, and could mix a decent colour match to each from a set of paints.
On the other hand, I can't deal with numbers at all. So like some people have said upthread "we all learned this at school" well I learned maths at school too, but it never really made sense or stuck in my head. I can remember numbers in patterns, like extension numbers at work etc, but ask me to add up a shopping list and I'm a disaster.
We all have our blind spots OP, apparently yours is colour.

Do you find colour theory interesting OP, or does it just puzzle you?

Yes I paint and I love colour.

I’m also very good at remembering and matching colour, for instance if we are out and I see a cushion or a pot or something I like and I can see it is just the right colour for a room; when I get it home it always is.

DH is shockingly bad; he’ll say, “Oh that dress is over there is the colour of those shoes you have”, when it’s absolutely nowhere near.

DS2 is really colourblind. I feel quite sad for him to be honest.

A few more pics! I love a colour theory poster, there are some beautiful vintage ones I'd like to frame.

My house is full of colour too; we are a grey free zone. I have a turquoise front door (inside and out) flanked by magenta geraniums. My garden is an absolute jewel box of colours (like Monty’s).

Yes I know that red and yellow makes orange and blue and yellow make green, for the same reason I know 5 + 5 = 10 and which is my left and which is my right, because I still remember these things after being taught them in primary school.

Is it just colours OP or do you have a bad memory generally?

When you spell words do you have to work out how something is spelt or do you just remember the spelling?

The range of greens from glaucous blueish through to yellowish seems obvious to any gardener.

Most of the colour mixing I do is 'additive' rather than 'reflective' colours and is less intuitive - on a computer green plus red gives yellow.