What is the 'opposite' of 'blue'? The language of colour spaces

Abstract

Colour wheels are a tool for ordering and understanding hue. Different colour wheels differ in the spacing of the colours around the wheel. The opponent colour theory, Munsell’s colour system, the standard printer’s primaries, the artist’s primaries, and Newton’s rainbow all present different variations of the colour wheel. I show that some of this variation is owing to imprecise use of language, based on Berlin and Kay’s theory of basic colour names. I also show that the artist’s colour wheel is an outlier that does not match well to the technical colour wheels because its principal colours are so strongly connected to the basic colour names. This has implications for how we teach colour at tertiary level: students have had the artist's colour wheel embedded in their consciousness since early primary school; as educators we need to unpick that imprecise tool and instil more accurate concepts of colour. Understanding why the artist's colour wheel exists in its current form is important in helping students understand the more technically-correct colour spaces.