How is it that when all paint colors are mixed they come up black but when light is mixed it's white?

When you mix all of the paint colors it ends up being black but when you mix all of the colors of light it ends up being white?How is it that when all paint colors are mixed they come up black but when light is mixed it's white?
There's a difference between colors of light and pigment colors. If you've ever noticed, the main colors used to create white light are Red, Blue, and Green (technically, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), such as on a projector, you will notice they have these three color lamps. That is pure light, and mixing all pure light colors gives white light.





Colors that we see on objects, however, are based on what is reflected back from the objects themselves. The primary pigment colors are not Red, Blue, Green typically, but Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta. Let's say you have green paint, red paint, and blue paint. The blue is absorbing green and red light and reflecting blue back to you. The green is absorbing red and blue and reflecting green, and so on with the red. If you mix the three equally, they will essentially end up absorbing all of the colors. When nothing is being reflected back at you, it appears very dark or black.





White paint, for example, reflects all colors. This also explains why mixing a bit of red paint in with white will make light red or pink. The white is reflecting everything, but the red is absorbing more of the other colors, making the small amount of red light reflected at you outweigh the others, thus tinting the otherwise white light.How is it that when all paint colors are mixed they come up black but when light is mixed it's white?
Good Question, however you are asking a How question when you really mean Why. Why do light particles bounce around and come out all complete white and why do the multitude of colors of the spectrum all become black when mixed (actually they turn to a muddy color but for the argument I will go along)?





Perhaps it is a matter vs. energy thing. Paint is composed of dead stuff imitating living light particles. True Light is millions of atoms playing against each other.





Not that I am a physicist at ALL. This is just top of my head conjecture as I sit at my computer decompressing my back after painting thirty art note-cards for my subcontracting business.





But then of course the ';smart people'; flunked Einstien at sums in his primary education because he thought in a more intuitive way. Not that I am Einstien. My current battle is to unify the field of tidiness to work-time in my house. I lament the memory of physics I have studied here and there is only enough to know to turn the screw to the left in America to loosen it, and more than once I have to sing the righty-tighty-lefty-loosey cheat.





So when the child asks Why is the sky Blue, you can't break it down further. Mechanics might tell you how, when is a calender marker. Why is more of an is thing, when the sky can speak for itself and say, ';Because I felt like not being grey today.'; then you can say that is why the sky is Blue.





Science is tool, a lovely fine tool, I don't worship it. I like the things it can do, I just don't put all my faith in it. I am sure the work that is being done with particle physics and quantum mechanics will help us with advanced lasers for lunar missions and medical applications and I wish I had the years and or the Intel dual core type processor brain that it would take to study light. As an artist I am all about the light.





Thanks for making me stretch my brainpan a bit, hope I don't have to find a metric wrench for it.
When you mix paint, its called subtractive color. The main colors are cyan, yellow and magenta and every other color is created using those 3 colors. When those 3 colors are mixed, its black.


Light uses additive color and the main colors are red, green and blue. It also uses those 3 colors to create every other color and when they all come together, it's white.
Because with paint, the colour you see is the light that is reflected. It is absorbing almost all the visible light, so if you were to think of objects as being the colour they absorb, then you could say the paint is actually white.





... and I've probably just confused you more... but yeah, the paint is reflecting absorbing light and light is just emitting/transmitting it. Maybe if you play with a light prism or something it'll make more sense.
Because paint colors reflect only their own color and absorb all others. Mix enough colors and all colors are absorbed, leaving black.
Paint colours have nothing to do with light colours as they are made up of ink. Paint absorbs every colour where as light reflects un absorbed colours making you see white.


Hope this helped!
Paints subtract colors from white light. Lights add colors.