Tertiary color if they exist at all, though indigo and scarlet are standard for blue–violet and red–vermilion. In another sense, a tertiary color is obtained by mixing secondary-colored pigments. These three colors are russet (orange–purple), slate (purple–green), and citron (green–orange), with the corresponding three quaternary colors plum (russet–slate), sage (slate–citron), buff (citron–russet) (with olive sometimes used for either slate or citron). Beyond that are shades of grey (blue grey and brown greys), which approach but never quite reach black. The RYB color terminology outlined above and in the color samples shown below is ultimately derived from the 1835 book "Chromatography", an analysis
Color mixing about mixing colors. To explain the mechanism, let us consider mixing red paint with yellow paint. The red paint is red because when the ambient light strikes it, the composition of the material is such that it absorbs all other colors in the visible spectrum except for red. The red light, not being absorbed, reflects off the paint and is what we see. This same mechanism describes the color of all material objects -- note that light is not a material object -- and so applies to the yellow paint as well. Making recourse to the figure above demonstrating additive