Mixing varying proportions of a primary color with its neighboring secondary color will produce:

• A. White
• B. Black
• C. Gray
• D. A tertiary color

Answer: (D)

Mixing a primary color with a neighboring secondary color creates a tertiary color. In color theory for painting, the primaries are red, yellow, and blue, and the secondaries are orange, green, and purple. The secondary that’s next to a given primary shares one of the same primaries, and blending them in varying amounts moves you into the range between the two on the color wheel. Those in-between hues are called tertiary colors, such as red-orange or blue-green. White or black aren’t produced by this type of mix, and gray results from desaturation or combining black and white, not from a primary with its neighboring secondary.