– What happens when an artist mixes paint for a painting? Are the pigments actually changing physically/chemically? What is actually happening to make the paints change color?
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I want to add a level of detail.
Those comparing it to mixing pingpong balls are right, but it goes a little deeper.
We see the color from each pigment because of the light that they reflect back to our eyes. We don’t see the colors they absorb
When individual, tiny bits of pigment are packed really close together, the light that some reflect will be absorbed by others.
If you mixed tow pigments that were really and truly only reflecting one wavelength, then they would become black when mixed because each pigment would absorb the wavelength the other one reflects. That’s why subtractive color mixing converges on black. It’s why a color you mix can be darker than either of the parts.
Luckily, well made pigments often have a somewhat wide reflection of wavelengths. What you see when you mix two pigments, are the wavelengths they have in common.
This is why the grade school idea of red yellow and blue being perfect primary mixing colors is flawed, and why you may have been frustrated in the past getting colors more gray or darker than you expected. Cyan, Magenta, and a bright yellow are slightly better as pigment primaries. But to get the widest range of mixed colors, you really need more than three primaries.
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