Note that when you mix the primary colors of paint together, the secondary colors they produce aren’t very bright or vibrant. That’s because these newly combined pigments subtract more and reflect less light from the color spectrum, giving you secondary colors that are dark and muddy rather than vibrant and bright.
These intermediate colors are located between the primary and secondary colors on the color paint wheel.
These colors are not usually included on paint color wheels, but they are still viable colors that can be produced by mixing other colors together.
If you want to use white paint for your painting project, you’ll have to purchase it instead of mixing it.
If the brown you are making is leaning too much toward a particular color, neutralize it by adding a little of the color opposite it.
Make sure you don’t add any white or any color that has white in it, like opaque yellow or opaque yellow-green, as this will make your black more like a shade of gray.
For example, adding white paint to red paint creates pink, which is a lighter version of red. If you add too much white paint to a pigment and create a tint that is too light, you can add more of the original hue to the mix to darken the pigment again.
Some artists prefer to add the color’s complement, which is its opposite color on an accurate CMY/RGB color wheel. For example, green can be used to darken magenta, and magenta to darken green, because they are across from each other on the color wheel. Add black paint, or a complement, a little at a time so you don’t overdo it. If your shade comes out too dark, you can lighten it by adding a little of the original paint color to the mix.
For example, add both white and black to yellow to make light olive green. The black will darken yellow, turning it into olive green, and the white will lighten that olive green. Different light olive greens can be mixed by controlling how much of each is added. For an unsaturated color like brown (dark orange), you can adjust the hue the same way as you would for bright orange: by adding small amounts of nearby colors on the color wheel, such as magenta, yellow, red, or orange. These will brighten your brown as well as change the hue.
For example, if you wanted to mix brown paint, you would want to have equally sized portions of blue, yellow, and red paint. However, if you wanted to mix black paint, you’d want to have a larger dollop of blue paint on the palette. It’s probably better to have too little paint on your palette than too much, since you can always add more.
Palette knives are ideal tools for mixing paints together on a palette. Not only do they do a much more thorough job of mixing your colors, but they also extend the lifespan of your normal painting brush, since you’re not using it for the task of paint mixing.
For example, if you plan to mix equal portions of the two colors, the amount of paint that you scoop up from each dollop should be the same.
Once the colors have blended into a new color, they’ve been mixed! If the color didn’t quite come out they way you wanted it to, simply clean your palette knife and add more paint to the mix until you’re satisfied with the color of the mixture.
