Talk:Primary color

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Primary color was nominated as a Art and architecture good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (April 26, 2021). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

Visual arts

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Visual arts, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of visual arts on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Visual artsWikipedia:WikiProject Visual artsTemplate:WikiProject Visual artsvisual arts

Color Top‑importance

	This article is supported by WikiProject Color, a project that provides a central approach to color-related subjects on Wikipedia. Help us improve articles to good and 1.0 standards; visit the wikiproject page for more details.ColorWikipedia:WikiProject ColorTemplate:WikiProject Colorcolor
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Archives

Index 1, 2, 3, 4

This page has archives. Topics inactive for 365 days are automatically archived by ClueBot III if there are more than 4.

Color/Colour

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I think that it doesn't matter which spelling we choose, as long as it's consistent within the article. However, according to the talk page this article is in American English, the title uses the American spelling and if you search for both spellings in the article, the American one is the most used. I see no reason to use the British spelling. If no one has any objections, I say we should just change the whole article to American English. Wikifan153 (talk) 09:04, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

I see you did this already, thanks. Curran919 (talk) 11:23, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Short description

@Utter Donkey a short description is intended to be scanned quickly in order to distinguish it from similarly-titled articles. It is not intended to replace the lead sentence. A category usually suffices. From the linked page: "Editors should keep in mind that short descriptions are meant to distinguish an article from similarly named articles in search results, and not to define the subject."

Right now the short description reads as "Sets of colors that can be mixed to produce gamut of c...". Doing a search for "Primary color", the other results have the following short descriptions: "1998 American film", "1996 book by Joe Klein", "2004 studio album by Day After Tomorrow"

There is probably a short description that fits in with these more terse examples. Since you seem engaged I will trust your decision. Cheers Wizmut (talk) 16:07, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I think a compromise is necessary between the two. The current is too wordy and yours is too short to be accurate. Lets workshop it. Considering that the article is primary color, perhaps: "a fundamental color in color mixing". Curran919 (talk) 07:56, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, without the "a". Wizmut (talk) 02:49, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Article subsection cleanup?

I wanted to suggest the 2 separate sections on the RYB model be merged into one.

At the moment, it’s confusing having a second RYB subsection under history. I’d suggest combining the two and moving it under “Subtractive models”. I’m not sure why it’s a higher level section outside of subtractive models (I assume it happened as a result of the earlier RYB debate and just never got resolved) but it makes much more sense to add it under that subsection.

Leaving the Criticism portion as a subsection under the relocated RYB model section would be fine I think, or making it an additional subsection under Subtractive models? (Could be renamed “controversy” or “debate on subtractive models within art”?) I read a great article on this topic from an artistic perspective a couple years ago (discussing the benefits of using a CMY model in art vs. RYB) but unfortunately I don’t remember if I bookmarked it. I’ll drop it here if I can find it again.

I’d try to handle this stuff myself but I don’t trust my ability to write things clearly and concisely and health issues prevent me from taking on any additional projects right now (especially since there appears to be some disagreement on this article which may lead to further debate). Catfrost (talk) 00:18, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Separation/clarification/reorganization of scientific versus traditional/descriptive/colloquial use of the term primary colors.

The article is written from the perspective of a physicist or color scientist and largely neglects the vastly more common usage of the term in its traditional sense. For example Encyclopedia Britannica specifically talks about the modern subtractive color model under Optics (https://www.britannica.com/science/primary-color), but the Color Wheel article under Design gets more straight to the point of the traditional RYB model (https://www.britannica.com/science/color-wheel). I think we're burying the lede here a bit by jumping straight into the mathematics of modern color models rather than covering how the term "primary colors" is most widely understood. Ultimately, it feels as if the article was constructed to "correct" the author's pet peeves regarding primary colors rather than clearly describe the extant term. ~2026-14985-74 (talk) 05:05, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Related Articles