How to Mix Colors in Painting (Color Theory for Beginners)
You do not need a huge set of paints; you need to understand how to mix the colors you want from a few. Color mixing is the skill that makes painting feel possible. Here is the beginner’s guide to it.
- From three primaries (a red, a yellow, and a blue) plus white, you can mix a huge range of colors. A big pre-made set is not necessary.
- Mix two primaries for a secondary: red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green, blue + red = purple.
- To mute or darken a color, add a little of its "complement" (the color opposite it on the color wheel), not just black.
- Value (how light or dark) matters more than color for a painting that reads. Adjust value with white and darks, not only hue.
- Add color slowly, especially strong colors, into weaker ones. It is far easier to make a color stronger than to fix an overpowering mix.
Start with the primaries
The secret that saves beginners money and frustration is that you can mix almost any color from a few. The three primary colors, a red, a yellow, and a blue, cannot be mixed from other colors, but combined they produce everything else, and with white to lighten, you have a full palette from four or five tubes. A common beginner set is a warm and cool version of each primary (say a warm and cool red, yellow, and blue) plus white, which gives you cleaner mixes. Rather than buying a 24-color set and hunting for the tube that matches what you see, learn to mix the color you want; it teaches you how color works and means you are never missing a shade.
Mixing secondaries, browns, and muting colors
Mix two primaries to get a secondary: red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple. Which red or yellow or blue you use changes the result, so experiment. To make a color duller or more natural (most real-world colors are muted, not neon), add a touch of its complement, the color directly opposite on the color wheel: a bit of green mutes red, a bit of orange mutes blue, a bit of purple mutes yellow. This is also how you mix believable browns and greys, by combining complements. Reaching for black to darken a color often makes it muddy and lifeless; mixing in the complement, or a darker version of a nearby color, keeps it alive.
Value: the thing that really matters
Here is the counterintuitive truth: getting the value right, how light or dark a color is, matters more to a painting than getting the exact hue. A painting with correct values but slightly-off colors reads well; one with beautiful colors but wrong values looks flat and confusing. So as you mix, think about how light or dark each area should be, and adjust with white (to lighten) and with darker mixes (to darken), not only by changing the color. Squint at your subject to see its values more clearly (squinting drops out detail and shows the light-and-dark pattern). And when mixing, add the strong or dark color a little at a time into the lighter one, because a drop of a powerful color goes a long way, and it is far easier to strengthen a mix than to rescue one you have overwhelmed.
Add strong colors into weak ones, a tiny bit at a time, not the other way around. A speck of a powerful pigment (like a phthalo blue or a strong red) can dominate a whole pile of paint, so build up gradually. It is easy to make a mix stronger and very hard to walk one back.
Common questions
How do you mix colors in painting?
Do I need to buy lots of paint colors?
How do I make a color less bright or more natural?
Should I use black to darken colors?
What is more important, color or value?
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