CMY Studio Guide

CMY Studio is a practical colour-planning tool built around a twelve-hue CMY mixing wheel. It helps painters:

• mix nine additional hue families from three starting paints;
• explore complementary, analogous, triadic and split-complementary relationships;
• build a four-colour painting palette using one dominant, one focal and two accent colours;
• compare a suggested palette in colour and greyscale.

Screen swatches are visual guides and are not exact matches for physical paint.

CMY Studio uses three physical starting paints:

1. Lemon Yellow
2. Primary Magenta
3. Primary Cyan

On the wheel, their positions are labelled Yellow, Magenta and Cyan because these are the hue-family names. The mixing guidance uses the full paint names to identify the tubes required.

The remaining nine wheel colours are mixed from these three paints.

• Orange2 parts Lemon Yellow : 1 part Primary Magenta
• Red1 part Lemon Yellow : 1 part Primary Magenta
• Red-Magenta1 part Lemon Yellow : 2 parts Primary Magenta
• Violet2 parts Primary Magenta : 1 part Primary Cyan
• Blue1 part Primary Magenta : 1 part Primary Cyan
• Blue-Cyan1 part Primary Magenta : 2 parts Primary Cyan
• Green-Cyan2 parts Primary Cyan : 1 part Lemon Yellow
• Green1 part Primary Cyan : 1 part Lemon Yellow
• Yellow-Green1 part Primary Cyan : 2 parts Lemon Yellow

These are starting points, not exact recipes. Pigment strength, opacity and tinting strength vary between manufacturers and paint ranges. Begin with the paint shown in the larger quantity and add the second paint gradually. For a 1:1 mixture, begin with the first paint listed and add the second until the desired hue is reached.

The names on the wheel describe hue families. They do not claim to reproduce every traditional named artists’ pigment.

• The wheel’s Blue is a CMY mixed blue made from Primary Magenta and Primary Cyan. It is not Ultramarine Blue.
• The wheel’s Red is a CMY mixed red made from Lemon Yellow and Primary Magenta. It is not Cadmium Red.
• The wheel’s Yellow uses Lemon Yellow as its physical starting paint. It is not Cadmium Yellow.

Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow, Viridian and other named colours have their own pigments and handling properties. They may differ in warmth, transparency, opacity, granulation, tinting strength and mixing behaviour.

If a painting requires the particular character of a named pigment, use the appropriate tube colour rather than expecting a CMY mixture to reproduce it exactly.

CMY Studio is a CMY mixing system, not a replacement for every colour on a traditional artist’s palette.

CMY Studio currently uses the CMY system. It does not presently include a traditional red-yellow-blue artist’s wheel.

A traditional RYB wheel—often associated with colours such as Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine Blue—is a separate mixing system with its own swatches, recipes and guidance. It cannot be produced simply by renaming the existing CMY wheel.

A separate Traditional RYB Artist Wheel may be considered as a future CMY Studio feature.

The four-colour CMY palette suggests:

• Dominant colour — 80%
• Focal colour — 10%
• Accent 1 — 5%
• Accent 2 — 5%

These figures describe approximate areas of the finished painting. They do not describe quantities of paint to mix.

The dominant colour may include lighter, darker, greyer and more muted variations belonging to the same broad colour family. The percentages are compositional guidance rather than a requirement to measure the painted surface precisely.

Different colours can have similar tonal values. The greyscale view helps show whether the suggested colours separate clearly as lights and darks.

CMY Studio calculates greyscale from its screen swatches. Actual paint values may differ because physical pigments, paint thickness, surface, lighting and added white all affect the result.

Titanium White is not required to mix the nine additional hue families. It may be added afterwards to:

• create lighter values and tints;
• reveal the character of very dark mixtures;
• increase opacity;
• build a wider value range within a colour family.

Adding white changes value, saturation and opacity. It does not simply make a colour brighter.

Burnt Umber is not part of the twelve-hue CMY wheel and is not one of its three starting paints.

It is an optional earth colour that can be useful for:

• darkening mixtures;
• warming a neutral or near-black;
• muting intense CMY colours;
• producing natural earth colours for landscape painting.

Because Burnt Umber is a dark, subdued orange-brown, it works particularly well with blue and blue-cyan mixtures.

A useful Burnt Umber dark

Start with: 1 part Burnt Umber : 1 part CMY mixed Blue

Then adjust it:

• add more CMY Blue or Primary Cyan for a cooler dark;
• add more Burnt Umber for a warmer dark;
• balance the two for a neutral-looking chromatic black.

The precise result will vary with the pigments and paint brand.

In an ideal subtractive CMY system, Yellow, Magenta and Cyan combined absorb most visible light. With physical artists’ paint, an equal mixture will not necessarily produce a perfectly neutral black.

A useful starting point is: 1 part Lemon Yellow : 1 part Primary Magenta : 1 part Primary Cyan

The result may lean brown, grey, blue, green or violet. Adjust it visually:

• if it is too green, add Primary Magenta;
• if it is too violet, add Lemon Yellow;
• if it is too brown or orange, add Primary Cyan;
• if it is too blue, add a little Lemon Yellow or mixed Orange.

CMY complements can also create chromatic darks:

• CMY Blue + Lemon Yellow
• CMY Red + Primary Cyan
• CMY Green + Primary Magenta
• Orange + Blue-Cyan
• Violet + Yellow-Green

These mixtures can create richer and more responsive darks than adding tube black to every colour.

Payne’s Grey and tube black are optional convenience colours rather than part of the core CMY wheel.

• Payne’s Grey can cool and darken mixtures quickly, but its formulation varies between manufacturers.
• Tube black provides a predictable deep dark, but excessive use can flatten or dull a palette.
• Chromatic blacks made from complements or CMY mixtures retain a coloured bias and can produce more varied shadows.

There is no rule against using Burnt Umber, Payne’s Grey or black. The purpose of the CMY wheel is to show what can be achieved from the three starting paints and how additional colours affect the result.

• Mix small test amounts before preparing a large quantity.
• Use a palette knife when judging ratios; brush loads are difficult to compare accurately.
• Record the brand, paint name and pigment code when a mixture works particularly well.
• Judge colour under the lighting in which the painting will normally be viewed.
• Allow acrylic paint to dry before making a final judgement, because some mixtures dry slightly darker.
• Treat all app ratios as useful starting directions rather than guarantees.