how to mix colors: everything you need to know

Mix colors with the primaries.

Primary Colors: Yellow, red and blue are equally spaced around the color wheel. The primaries cannot be mixed from any other colors.

What colors do artists use for mixing? We will use a limited palette of the three primaries.

Manufactures don't make the exact primary colors. These three colors are widely available and they are fine to practice mixing.

• Cadmium Yellow
• Cadmium Red
  
• Ultramarine Blue

Many experienced artists use a double primary palette, also called a split primary palette. It has a warm and cool version of each primary color. Recommended colors for a full palette.

Learn more art lingo.

Hue is the name of the actual color. For example, apple red or fire engine red are both red hues. Olive green is a green hue.

Shades are created by mixing any hue with black. A shade is darker and duller than the original color.

Tones are made by mixing a color with grey.

Tints are made by mixing a color with white. However, adding white to a color will give it a chalky appearance.

Saturation/Chroma is the color's purity or intensity.

Value is the light or darkness of a color.

Mastering these terms will lead to more refined and satisfying color mixing.

How to mix the secondary colors

Looking at the color wheel, each secondary color is half way between two primary colors.

Create each secondary color by mixing together a small patch of their two primary colors:

• Red and yellow = orange.
• Blue and yellow = green.
• Red and blue = violet (purple).

Orange, green and violet are so easy to mix!

We can get more colors by varying the amounts of each primary color.

Now we don't have to buy these colors because we can just mix them.

Mixing green colors

Thalo Blue is a very strong blue that is not on our practice list. However, it makes the most beautiful greens.

Use just a touch of Thalo Blue with yellow to mix a green. See tip #2

Now we can mix more greens:

• Starting with the mixed green, add more yellow to get a nice spring green.
• Add blue to your green for a cool blue-green.
• The addition of red to the original green will produce a darker, more subdued green.

We can mix additional greens with other blues and yellows. Ultramarine Blue and yellow make quieter natural looking greens.

How to mix the tertiary colors.

Tertiary colors are created by mixing a primary color with a secondary color.

We have the secondary colors we just mixed on our palette. Now, mix our orange with primary yellow to create yellow-orange. See the YO example.

Mix more tertiaries clock-wise around the color wheel:

• YG - yellow-green
  
• BG - blue-green
  
• BV - blue-violet
• RV - red-violet
• RO - red-orange

We know how to mix colors, so we don't have to buy any tertiary colors.

Palette knives are handy for mixing.

3. White is a cool, opaque color. Rather than using white to lighten a color, add the lighter color beside it on the color wheel. The mixed color will remain bright without a chalky appearance.

4. Mixing paint colors with a palette knife instead of a brush, uses less paint.

5. Don't mix paint colors thoroughly before putting them on a painting. The color variations add interest to our paintings.

6. When we start a painting, mix a large pile of a neutral color from the painting's color scheme. Adding white to the mixture makes greys. Use the neutral color or grey to subdue any of the other colors in the painting. This maintains color harmony because all the colors are related.

7. Clean the brush before mixing a new color. Any paint left in the brush could alter the new color we are mixing.

8 popular color schemes

We create harmony in our paintings by using a color scheme that has a limited number of colors.

The colors work together seamlessly, rather than clashing or competing with each other.

The popular painting color schemes use only two to four colors.

An exception is the analogous scheme that may use up to five colors.

A multitude of additional colors can be mixed from the selected scheme. The mixed colors are all remain in perfect harmony.

Mix our dark colors

Viridian Green and Alizarin Crimson mixed together create a nice black.

Adding additional Viridian or Alizarin will slant the black toward green or red.

Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue are one of my favorite go-to mixtures.

Adding more Ultramarine makes a cool black.

Use more Burnt Sienna for a nice variety of warm browns.

Compliments quiet each other.

Sometimes we want calmer, natural looking colors in our paintings.

Mixing any color with its compliment will subdue it and make it look more natural.

Complimentary colors are directly across from each other on the color wheel.

There are two ways to subdue a color and make it a more natural looking color.

• Mix a color with its complimentary color.
  
• Mix the color with a black, brown or grey that we have mixed from the colors used in the painting.
  

Bright, bold colors are lots of fun, but natural looking colors are beautiful, too.

Warm and Cool Colors

Warm colors contain yellow and convey energy. They are known to "advance" toward us, so they make areas of the painting look closer.

Use warm colors in the foreground and middle area of a painting.

How do we mix warm paint colors?

We can make any color warmer by adding yellow or orange which contains yellow.

For example, if we are painting an orange, the center of the orange is bulging toward us. Paint the center warmer to make it advance toward the viewer.

The sides of the orange would be painted cooler to make them turn away from us.