🔴

Primary Colours

10 min
Ages 4–14
Art Fundamentals

🎒 What you need:

Red, blue, and yellow paint or coloured pencilsWhite paper
👋

Three colours rule them all!

Did you know that every single colour you have ever seen can be made from just three colours? These are called the primary colours. They are the parents of all other colours!

The Three Primary Colours

The primary colours are:

  • 🔴 Red — warm, energetic, passionate
  • 🔵 Blue — cool, calm, trustworthy
  • 🟡 Yellow — bright, cheerful, energetic

Why Are They "Primary"?

They are called primary because they cannot be made by mixing other colours. Red is just red. You cannot mix two other paints to create it. But you CAN mix red with other primaries to create almost any colour in the world!

✏️ Activity: Colour Hunt

Before you start mixing, train your eyes! Look around the room and find:

  • 3 things that are red (or mostly red)
  • 3 things that are blue (or mostly blue)
  • 3 things that are yellow (or mostly yellow)
  • Something that is PURELY one primary colour — no mixing at all

Colour Theory Fact

Light works differently from paint! If you mix red, green and blue light (RGB), you get white light. That's how your phone screen makes every colour. But mix red, blue, and yellow paint together and you get a muddy brown-black. Art and science together!

Try It Digitally!

Open the Drawing Canvas and explore the colour picker. Can you find pure red, pure blue, and pure yellow? Try drawing three big overlapping circles, each a different primary colour.

🎉

Lesson Complete!

Great work! You just finished Primary Colours. Ready for the next lesson?

Back to Art Fundamentals