Color Mixing Table

When mixing paints, add them little by little to adjust the color. You can always add more. This is especially true when working with black and blue, which tend to dominate other colors. Add a little bit at a time until you achieve the desired result.

To find out if the color is complementary, resort to the help of your own eyes. This is an old trick: look closely at the color, then look away at the white surface. Due to "color fatigue" of the eyes, you will see the opposite color.

Choosing primary colors when buying can be difficult. Look for a magenta that does not contain white and blue pigments (PW and PB). Purple and red pigments, such as PV19 and PR122, are best. Good Cyanide PB15:3. PB15 and PG7 are also good. If you need art paints or glazes, you can try to pick up colors using a printer. Print a sample from a computer on a printer to take it with you to the store, or find the primary colors on the walls of a cereal or cookie package.

We need one color triangle of colors that provide visual balance to the picture, and another color triangle to identify pairs of colors that neutralize each other, since complementary colors for these tasks are slightly different. So, ultramarine goes well with lemon yellow and other beautiful yellow shades, but to darken these yellows, use purple. Additional information on this issue can be found online.

How many tubes of different colors do you really need to paint a picture? Jean-Louis Morell's book on watercolor painting shows how, using the cyan-yellow-magenta color triangle, you can get almost any desired color from only four or five, but this can also be done with the help of the listed three plus white (paper acts as white in watercolor painting)!

The best range of shades can be obtained by mixing colors close to the CMY primary colors, but to get a darker shade, one or even better two should be darker than these primary colors, for example, Persian blue or cobalt blue, raspberry alizarin.

What are you writing? The required colors depend entirely on what you are writing. For example, ultramarine, Neapolitan yellow, burnt sienna and white will be useful for remote landscapes, if you do not need bright green and yellow colors.

Itten Color circle

A tool such as a color circle, which is a continuous transition of all the colors of the rainbow, can come to the aid of novice artists. For example, shades located at opposite ends of the color wheel are used to shade the selected color.

So, a little green is used to shade purple. When mixing opposite colors in equal amounts, we will get a black color.

Next come the colors of the second order: orange, purple and green. The remaining colors are obtained by mixing the main ones.

There are 12 colors in total, but the main – primary are 3 colors: yellow, red and blue.

In order to make the resulting color lighter, you need to add a little white paint. Conversely, use a little black paint to darken.

Mixing base colors

So, let's get started. Let's start with the simplest way. To obtain new colors, the method of combining existing base paints is used. The base colors for mixing are 3 colors: yellow, cyan and magenta. Such colors are called primary. With their help, you can get secondary colors. For example:

blue + yellow = green

cyan + magenta = blue

magenta + yellow = red

If you mix all 3 primary colors in a ratio of 1:1:1, you can get black.

Variety of shades of red

Red consists of three original colors that make up the base. Therefore, even a minimal set of paints cannot do without it. However, the question of how to get red when mixing paints sometimes still arises. This is due to the fact that magenta is involved in printing, so creative searches for how to get red are natural. Everything is solved very simply: to obtain a natural red, yellow is mixed with magenta in volumes of 1:1.

The color scheme of red is diverse, therefore, there are many options for combining:

The question of how to get a crimson color is extremely popular. The initial colors for the mixture are red and blue in equal proportions, the introduction of small amounts of black or white color will help to vary the shade of crimson.

There are several answers to how to get brown. The easiest way is to connect red and green. Since green itself is the result of mixing yellow and blue, then, accordingly, combining the three main colors will help to achieve a brown background. In more detail, the ways to achieve shades of brown are shown in the diagram:

Pink can be obtained by combining red with white.

If you mix 2 portions of red color with 1 part of yellow paint, you will get scarlet. To get orange, you need to increase the volume of yellow. Depending on the desired shade, the orange color is obtained by mixing pink paint and yellow dye.

There are different ways to achieve burgundy. The easiest way is to add a drop of blue paint, because red itself is dark. A similar result will be when a little yellow and a drop of black paint are introduced into the red color.

Mixing red and pink dye allows you to achieve a softened red semitone, white color will help to increase the result.

Combining red with purple in a 3:1 ratio results in a dark red tone.

Remark! A beautiful purple color cannot be obtained by combining purple with red. The only way to achieve a bright shade is to find red paint without yellow impurities and mix it with blue.

The variety of shades of red is demonstrated by the following circle. It is worth noting that adding white paints to any mixture leads to a lightening of the tone, and black ones - to darkening.

The table below will help you figure out the names of shades of red:

Analog triad

The analog color scheme is formed by three adjacent colors in the Itten color circle (12 colors in total). They are used in soft, comfortable compositions. The analog circuit is most often found in nature, so it looks harmonious and pleasant. When using this scheme, it is possible to choose one color as the main one, the second as the supporting one, and use the third for accentuation. It can be a smooth transition of shades of one quarter of the color circle.

Complementary (contrasting) colors

Complementary, or additional, contrasting, are the colors located on opposite sides of the Itten color circle. The combination of complimentary colors is very lively and energetic, especially with maximum color saturation. One of the most striking such combinations is red – green.

Getting complex colors

Yes, for sure, these examples are known to almost everyone. Therefore, let's consider the rules for obtaining more complex colors.

Here you can clearly see which colors contrast with each other, which are most compatible with each other. The Itten circle clearly shows which colors need to be mixed to get the desired one.

Variety of green

The original green is usually presented in all sets, in the absence of the necessary dye, there are no problems with obtaining it. Combining yellow with blue gives the desired green background. But any direction of creativity, be it painting, interior design or another option for decorating objects requires a wide palette of green. The basic principle of all experiments is to change the proportions of the base colors, white or black dye is used to lighten or darken the background.

Next, we will talk about mixing options and the results of the experiment:

The combination of blue and yellow with a slight addition of brown represents khaki. Green with a small amount of yellow forms olive.

The traditional light green is the result of mixing green with white. Adding yellow or blue color will help regulate the heat.

?Attention! The quality of the initial components affects the saturation of the green color. The more intense the base tones, the brighter the mixing result will be.

The yellow-green effect will be obtained by combining yellow with blue in a ratio of 2:1. The inverse proportion will lead to a blue-green tone.

Dark green color is achieved by adding black in half volume.

A warm light green background is formed from a mixture of white, blue and yellow paint in a ratio of 2:1:1.

The variety of colors of a green shade demonstrates the circle. The base dye is located in the center, then there is an additional component, after the mixing result. The last circle is the experiments of the resulting tone with the addition of white and black dye.

The next table will become an assistant when conducting experiments.

Variations of the blue color

An equally rich palette of shades is given by mixing with blue dye, which is part of the basic triad. Therefore, its presence in any set is mandatory. However, even a set of 12 colors sometimes does not meet the needs for a true blue tone. The reason is the color variation. The classic tone is called royal, and on sale it is often replaced by ultramarine, which is characterized by a bright dark shade with a slight presence of purple. Therefore, the question of how to get the blue color no longer seems absurd. The way out of this situation will be to add white to the base color in a ratio of 3:1. In the same way, blue is obtained, only more white is used when combining.