Cyanish Blue occurs between Cyan and Blue. Greenish Cyan occurs between green and Cyan. Yellowish Green occurs between Yellow and Green. Primary colors, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, can be mixed with each other to create the secondary colors of Red (Magenta + Yellow), Green (Cyan + Yellow), and Blue (Cyan + Magenta).Īs far as I’m concerned those colors that fall between the primary color and its nearest secondary color are teriary colors. Terminology of what’s called tertiary or anything else, including even primary, can be a matter of opinion and personal preference, just like the orientation of the color wheel. I always put blue in the bottom left, red in the bottom right, and yellow at top center, but I’ve seen other artists with blue and red switched.
It’s worth noting that artists in different places and at different times since the invention of the idea called a “color wheel” have had different ideas of what it should look like. The idea of a tertiary being a mix of two secondaries sounds familiar though, so I’ve probably heard about or read one of those books in the past. A intermediate is simply something that is between two things. It doesn’t matter what the two colors are or what your result is. I think an “intermediate” color is anything between two colors you’re mixing. So yellow-orange, as I was taught, would be called tertiary.
As I learned color theory, a “tertiary” color is between a primary and a secondary, not the mixing of two secondaries.