Tertiary Colors

 

What are the tertiary colours?  The tertiary colours are often referred to as intermediate colours. Tertiary colours are made by mixing a primary colour with a secondary. There are six tertiary colours.When naming tertiary colours, the primary colour goes before the secondary colour and a hyphen is used to join the mixed colours together. For example, yellow mixed with green will create yellow-green. 

 

Now, let's find out what are the six tertiary colours: 

Yellow + green = yellow-green

Yellow + orange = yellow-orange

Red + orange = red-orange

Red + purple = red-purple (red-violet)

Blue + purple = blue-purple (blue-violet) and 

Blue + green = blue-green. 

 

These six tertiary colours are also known by other names...

Yellow-green = lime

Yellow-orange = amber

Red-orange = vermilion

Red-purple (red-violet) = magenta

Blue-purple (blue-violet) = 

Blue-green = teal

 

And just to recap, so far we've learned about the primary colours. The secondary colours, which are made by mixing two primary colours together. The tertiary colours, which are made by mixing your primary and the secondary colour together. But what happens when we make two secondary colours together? When we mix two secondary colours together, we are actually mixing all three primary colours together in different amounts, creating something I like to call the second set of tertiary colours. 

 

For example...

When we mix orange and purple together, we are actually mixing red, yellow, some more red and blue together creating a colour called RUSSET.

 

When we mix green and orange together, we are actually mixing yellow, blue, red, and some more yellow together creating a colour called CITRON/OLIVE.

 

And when we mix green and purple together, we are actually mixing red, blue, yellow, and some more blue together creating a colour called SLATE.