Take everything in these notes with a pinch of salt—there are no right answers
here.
I attempt to make these notes coherent, reasonably consistent,
and close enough to the truth to be of practical use.
I have made compromises in my attempts to make the text readable
and the illustrations entertaining.
These notes are intended as an introduction to the subject and as a summary of current thinking. The explanations are necessarily simplified. I don’t think they’re actually wrong, or even misleading, but you should consult more scholarly works if you want greater accuracy.
The colour theory
taught in painting classes is often wrong and usually misleading.
Don’t mention anything you learn from these notes when you’re at
a painting class—they’re likely to take offence at the truth.
A viewer’s response is not determined by the way paints mix but by the way the human eye responds. Mixing paint is very complicated. The response of the human eye to colour is very complicated. Confusing these two distinct processes is guaranteed to obscure both of them.
Every website is a work in progress, this one more so than most. I have plans for pages to explain some of the complications and some of the trickier points but I still haven’t made them. I’m working on it, and I’m working on correcting mistakes on the other pages, so if you find mistakes or missing points, please tell me—you can use the contact form.