Why does the visible light spectrum combine to make white instead of black like the color wheel in art class?

Question

Aren’t they both just visible light hitting our eyes??

In: 0

Answer 1

Pigment doesn’t create light. Quite the opposite, it subtracts from it selectively.

For example, red paint does not create red color. It *removes* the colors that *aren’t* red. It’s suppressing the green and blue in the white light that reflects off it, leaving more of the red still left.

So when you add more paints, they do more and more subtracting of more and more of the color spectrum, Which is why they turn black.

Lights are different because they are adding color. When you see a red light, it’s adding more red color to the room. When you put more different color lights together, they’re adding more colors to the mix, not subtracting more colors.