Color magic

Color magic, Color casting, Pigment manipulation, and painting reality are different names for the same ability: the ability to manipulate the Colors within oneself and one's surroundings. Despite the common misconception, any sapient being, and in some cases, even some creatures, can learn it.

Colors and their effects

At the base level, the world is comprised of six main Colors (Gray, the lack of Color, usually isn't counted), their mixes, and variations in their saturation. Each of those Colors affects the properties of both living beings and inanimate objects. Additionally, each Color has its positive and negative representation, two opposing properties in which said Color can manifest. For the casters, it is important to learn both those properties and discover the techniques that will control which of the two representations will manifest. Otherwise, casting any kind of spell would become a gamble as the spell could have opposite effects than the ones wanted.

Positive	Colors (and Patterns)	Negative
Sight and Truth (braids)	Blue	Illusion and Lies (eyes)
Voice ("V" with curled ends, Aries)	Green	Silence (irregular dots)
Safety (scales pointed downwards)	Red	Danger (spikes pointing to sky)
Stability (parallel lines)	Yellow	Negation (crossing lines)
Order (diamonds, like card suit)	White	Chaos (randomly shaped stars)
Strength (circles with lines coming towards them)	Black	Weakness (empty circles)

While anyone can learn to manipulate Colors, they are all restricted to the number of Colors they will be able to use at the same time and to the specific "palette" of Colors. There are casters who can use all of the Colors, but only one at the same time, there are those who can use multiple but already determined ones at the same time, but most casters will only ever be able to use a singular Color, and no caster is capable of using more than four Colors at the same time, and those are very rare individuals.

Sources of magic

There are four sources from which a caster can pull the Colors to conjure magical effects. The first one, the easiest to learn but also the most dangerous to the caster, is to use the Colors that are stored within their body, specifically within the so-called Color Nests, the areas within one's body that accumulate each of the Colors. Since the caster doesn't have to pull the Colors from far away, they can completely focus on the spell they are about to cast. However, pulling from one's Nests can quickly drain them, then damage them, pull all the remaining Color from one's body, and then try to force to pull it from the surroundings, using one's body as a bypass, heavily straining the organism and possibly leading to sickness or death.
The second one, which is safer for the caster but possibly damaging to the area they are in, is to pull the Color from the surroundings. This, however, restricts the Colors one can use to the ones present in the location (it would be hard to pull Red while standing in the sea, for example, or green in a desert). The excessive use of all the Colors, especially the strongest Color in the surroundings can quickly lead to the desaturation and the area turning Gray. Once Gray, the area doesn't regenerate the Colors naturally and needs to be restored either with proper technology or massive amounts of Colors in the right concentrations.
Just like they can use their own Colors, casters can use Colors of other people as well. Since it is way easier to overdo it when not draining one's own body, this technique is forbidden to use in a lot of places as long as it would be used on sapient creatures, and there are some countries where sacrificing Colors of any living being is illegal. Additionally, it might be hard to draw the Colors from some species of beings such as Rockwings, but on the other hand, Huerustlers and Smeltsparks are sources of very specific Colors that can be seen just by looking at them. And still, it is the second best way to provide large amounts of Colors without hurting oneself or damaging the environment.
The fourth, and the easiest and most efficient source of Colors for spells are Pigments. Pigments are Colors brought to material form and turned to fine powder. They are the purest form of Color a caster can get their hands on. But there is a caveat. They are extremely expensive, and their amounts are both limited and heavily regulated by the countries in which the Pigment Factories produce them. Unless one has contacts in high places, getting more than a flat teaspoon of them would bankrupt most living people. And yet, there are stories of those who own whole barrels of them. In comparison, a flat teaspoon of Pigments could last a caster half a decade should they not use their spells to deal with any possible inconvenience.

Color magic and Witches

While every caster is limited by the number of Colors they can manipulate and how much they can draw from their source, the Witches don't have those limits. Compared to normal humans, Witches don't have Color nests inside of them. Instead, of storing Colors in specific areas of their bodies, they constantly generate almost unlimited amounts of them, constantly mixing and separating, without any harm to their bodies. When casting a spell requiring a specific Color or a mixture of a few of them, the Witch's body will focus on generating mostly them.
Additionally, while a few rare individuals are capable of using up to 4 Colors, and those always are the same four, the Witches can freely switch between the Colors they use for their spells and can manipulate all six of them at the same time. But despite that, many of the Witches tend to focus only on using the same few of them on the daily, as it tends to be easier.
Since the Witches don't draw the Colors from any limited source, there is never any concern of turning anything Gray. However, since they tend to use larger amounts of Colors than normal people, their spells tend to create Oversaturation (geographic anomaly) more often, though they can simply fix the Color levels with their spells quite easily.

Patterns

Each of the positive or negative representations of each Color tends to show up in nature in specific patterns. Trying to cast spells by using those patterns or just by visualizing them can push the spells towards manifesting more desired effects, even when casting spells without learning the rules and techniques of a specific spell prior. Learning patterns is an especially useful skill for the casters capable of using more than one Color at the same time as it reduces the chance of the spell going really wild drastically.

Mixing Colors

If a caster is capable of using more than one Color at a time, they can try to mix a few of them (depending on their limits) to create new spells that gain properties of each of the Colors. Visually, the correctly prepared spell will mix perfectly turning into a new, secondary Color. Still, the caster needs to know what they are doing as each added Color increases the chance of changing the representation of each one of them to the opposite of the ones desired. And while a lot of beginners think that adding each Color only adds another roll of 50% chance of each Color flipping its representation, in reality, the mixing is also affected by how well the Colors interact with each other: are they complementary, contrasting, triadic, or do they neighbor each other? At that point, adjusting the levels of each Color in the right way can reduce the chance of the spell going bad to almost zero, while messing the Colors up can make it pretty much a certainty.

Dueling by messing up the Color balance

While normal magic duels rely on casting spells at each other and the ability to predict or counter the moves of the opponent, there is another way to shut down the caster without affecting them directly. And that is to mess with the levels of Colors they are about to use. By doing that, it is possible to forcibly flip the meanings of the spell though the more Colors a spell uses the more unpredictable effects it then might manifest, and so it might turn out that the flipped spell is just as dangerous or even worse than the original that was supposed to be cast. On the other hand, it isn't that rare for beginner casters to heal their opponents instead of harming them once their Red spell gets flipped.

Oversaturation

The main problem with using Color magic is that even the simplest spells disrupt the natural balance of Colors in the surroundings. Drawing the Colors for a spell can drain the area and turn it Gray, making it barren, crumbling, weakened, and killing the plants. But the opposite is just as bad. When a spell hits an area, most of the Colors that formed it spill out and spread. When it comes to singular, simpler spells, the levels of those Colors are low enough that they will probably balance themselves with the ones already present soon enough. Similarly, if casters use various Colors for their spells in the same area, they too will probably counter each other out. But if one or only few Colors are constantly cast in one area or really big amounts of them are used, they will start to gather in those spots. At some point, the discoloration of the area will be visible and from that point on, it is quite a short time until it gets oversaturated. Once that happens, the area becomes warped and twisted. The oversaturated Colors turn it dangerous to all living beings, by corrupting or outright killing them, as well as they start to affect the properties of everything within the contaminated area.