Additive Color

Because I work with computers all the time, the concept of additive color has been explained to me before. Subtractive color is what we learn in school. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue (or magenta, yellow, cyan if you're using a printer). Mixing these colors give you new colors (red + yellow = orange) but as you add more colors, the more the colors turn to black. Additive colors work in reverse. The primary colors are red, green, and blue (as in an RGB computer monitor). As you mix the primary colors of light, the color fades closer to white.

I just came to understand this last night. I was so excited about this, that I made a color-wheel in Photoshop to illustrate the concept.

Then I realized it looks like a beach ball.

But anyway, there are several things that became clear. One, if I intend to make an unusual shader that appears yellow with green undertones, throwing red into the mix might create some interesting colors. Two, what my art teacher was saying the other day about blue and red being complements (rather than red and green) now makes a whole lot more sense. On an additive color wheel, red and cyan are indeed complementary (and will also create a wild vibrating edge when put next to each other).