How To Mix Color | A Beginners Guide, by Paint Coach on YouTube. 17 min 16 s.
- Video length
- 17 min 16 s
- Time to do it
- 20 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 8
What you need
Steps
Set out your paint in three separate piles on the palette: a warm red, a cool lemon yellow and a deep blue. Add a pile of titanium white well apart from them.
Picture the colour wheel: red, yellow and blue sit evenly spaced. The colours between them are the secondary mixes, orange, green and violet.
Mix a primary with the primary next to it on the wheel to get a clean secondary. Red plus yellow makes orange, yellow plus blue makes green, blue plus red makes violet.
Keep each mix in its own spot on the palette and work around the wheel in order. This keeps your colours organised and stops muddy cross-contamination.
To lighten a colour, add a little titanium white and mix fully before adding more. Add white in small amounts so you do not lose the hue.
To dull or darken a colour, add a small amount of the colour opposite it on the wheel. A touch of green dulls red, and a touch of violet dulls yellow.
Test each mix on a scrap of canvas or the edge of your board before painting. Adjust with tiny amounts of paint until the swatch matches what you want.
Clean your brush or knife between mixes so leftover paint does not contaminate the next colour. Wipe it on a rag, then rinse or dip in medium.
Tips and common mistakes
Add dark colours to light ones a little at a time, since it is much easier to darken a mix than to lighten it again.
Use two blues or two reds, one warm and one cool, to widen the range of greens and violets you can mix.
Keep your white pile away from the other colours, because a speck of dark paint in white is hard to remove.
Mix more paint than you think you need for a area, so you do not have to rematch the colour halfway through.
Questions
Do I need oil paints to follow this?
No. The same colour wheel rules work with acrylics. Just swap linseed oil medium for water or an acrylic medium when thinning.
Why do my mixes look muddy?
You are probably mixing all three primaries at once or not cleaning your brush. Stick to two colours at a time and wipe the brush between mixes.
How do I make a colour lighter without making it chalky?
Add white in small amounts and mix it in fully. Too much white at once flattens the colour and makes it look chalky.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
