In subtractive color mixing, pigments absorb certain wavelengths of light, and mixing colors combines those absorptions. The primary pigments are red, blue, and yellow. When you blend two of them, you get a secondary color: red plus yellow gives orange, yellow plus blue gives green, and red plus blue gives violet. Since you’re working with all three primaries, you can create those three secondary colors by pairing them in different ways. So the statement that mixing the primary colors red, blue, and yellow yields orange, green, and violet through subtractive color mixing reflects how secondaries arise from combining the primaries. The other ideas—that mixing all three produces black or neutral, or that subtractive mixing adds light and brightens colors—don’t describe what happens in subtractive mixing as accurately.