Yes… I’m kind of pleased with myself for that sentence! But it’s true.

You’ll be happy to know you don’t need that luxury box set of 80 colors to get fabulous mixing results with watercolors.

However, it does take a little bit of care and consideration when choosing a limited palette for watercolor painting.

Ideally when you select paints, you should choose a minimal number of colors that produce the entire range of mixing possibilities, including dark values, and as close as possible to black.

These paints would be the foundation of a good watercolor palette…

Why use a Limited Palette for Watercolor Painting

Imagine being able to mix a huge range of colors with just a handful of paints. Wouldn’t that make life easier? Using a limited number of paints has several advantages:

• It’s probably the best way to learn about color mixing. If you have too many color choices in your palette, trying to remember mixing possibilities is more of a struggle.
• A limited palette is more affordable. Starting off with a small number of paints is much cheaper !
• It can be quite liberating using a small range of colors because there are less choices to make. As a result this helps speed up your painting process.
• Another advantage of a limited palette is that it creates improved color harmony in your paintings.

All you need to do now is choose the fewest paints for the best possible results. So what are your options?

3 Color Watercolor Palette (The RYB Color Model)

Three paints are the strict minimum needed for mixing all the hues around the color wheel. This is known as a primary triad.

Traditionally we think of primary colors as red, yellow, and blue(This is called the RYB color model).

In theory, all colors can be mixed using just three primary colors. But in reality we’re restricted by the color appearance created by the pigments used in paint ingredients.

Generally speaking, some pigments have a warm bias, and others have a cool bias. For example you can find cool red paints or warm red paints, cool blues and warm blues, etc.

(Note: Colors can be “perceived” as warm or cool. This idea stems from certain psychological triggers. For example we associate warm colors with sunlight, but cool hues are more associated with shade)

Unfortunately, mixing with paints which match the yellow, blue and red criteria would not give us a full range of color mixing potential.

In terms of paint colors, an example of this would be:

• Hansa Yellow Deep – Pigment number: PY65
• French ultramarine – Pigment number: PB29
• Pyrrol scarlet – Pigment number: PR255

(Note: these paint names refer to Daniel Smith paints).

As you can see, the oranges created by this range of paints are nice and saturated, but the greens and purples are dull and lack saturation.

Mixing all three paints in various proportions should theoretically produce black. In reality this is quite tricky to achieve and at best you can produce a neutral dark gray.

3 Color Watercolor Palette (The CYM Color Model)

Because the RYB model has some failings in terms of color saturation, for mixing purposes a lot of artists argue that a “true” primary triad should be made up of cyan, yellow, and magenta. (This is the CMY color model which is the same as used in modern printing).

A close equivalent to cyan, yellow and magenta in terms of paint colors would include:

• Phthalo blue GS – Pigment number: PB15:3
• Lemon yellow – Pigment number: PY175
• Quinacridone rose – Pigment number: PV19

This time all the colors are quite brightly saturated. The greens are intense and the purples are quite vivid. And by mixing all three colors together you can get slightly closer to black, although I admit this is still tricky to pull off, and takes time to adjust the balance of pigments.

So the “CYM” three color palette is probably more versatile, letting you mix a wider range of colors while maintaining color saturation in comparison to the “RYB” palette.

This color system is widely accepted and used in art schools to teach color mixing basics. So if you’re looking for an absolute minimum number of paints for achieving a large range of hues, I would go with this.

However, mixing with primary triads like these takes skill to use. Everything needs to be carefully mixed and from a usability point of view it lacks comfort and convenience.

And despite what some purists argue, even the CYM selection of paints is imperfect. Some of the color mixes still lack good color saturation. The oranges and blues for example are less vibrant and noticeably duller than other paint mixing options.

Trying to choose the “best” three paints for the primary triad can get very intellectual – remember a palette is meant to be used and enjoyed for the colors it produces !

And keep in mind that these combinations of three paints is just an example of many possible combinations. There’s nothing to stop you from experimenting with many other options

6 Color Watercolor Palette (The Split Primary)

To help solve the limitations of color triads, artists frequently opt for a six color palette of watercolors to use as a mixing foundation.

And when choosing these six paints, one thing most watercolor artists will agree with is to pick one cool and one warm version of each primary color.

This is the basis of the split primary palette.

This color wheel represents the split primary concept. As you can see, this is called a “split primary” wheel because it “splits” each primary color in two by using a warm and cool version of each primary.

This six color, split primary palette offers the best of both the RYB and CYM color models above by combining them both together.

• Hansa Yellow Deep – Pigment number: PY65
• Lemon yellow – Pigment number: PY175
• Phthalo blue GS – Pigment number: PB15:3
• French ultramarine – Pigment number: PB29
• Quinacridone rose – Pigment number: PV19
• Pyrrol scarlet – Pigment number: PR255

(Please note: these link to Jackson’s art supplies Store. By using these links you can get a 10% discount on your first order with them).

The advantage of this combination of colors is that it offers a wider range of mixing possibilities, it’s easier to use, and it helps distribute the saturation problems of primary triads more evenly.

In other words, you can more easily mix bright saturated colors around the whole of the color wheel.

An Alternative Six Color Palette (the Secondary Palette)

The idea behind six color palettes like the one above is to add more paints to improve the color intensity of mixed colors, in particular the secondary colors: green, purple, and orange. So why not simply add paints to represent those secondary colors?

This is exactly what some artists do. It’s often called a “secondary palette”.

The idea behind this kind of palette is to use the CYM primary triad (cyan, yellow, and magenta) and then add colors for green, purple and blue.

In terms of paint selections you end up with something like this:

• Yellow: Lemon yellow – Pigment number: PY175
• Green: Phthalo Green BS – Pigment number: PG7
• Cyan: Phthalo blue GS – Pigment number: PB15:3
• Purple: French ultramarine – Pigment number: PB29
• Magenta: Quinacridone rose – Pigment number: PV19
• Orange: Pyrrol Orange – Pigment number: PO73

Phtahlo green has a vivid, somewhat unreal color appearance, but it’s great for mixing other greens. We already know the warm blue French ultramarine which is a pigment which tends towards violet, hence its use for representing purple. And Pyrrol orange has a warm red-orange appearance.

Adding highly saturated secondary paints like these enhances the color intensity of your mixtures and is a great option worth trying out.

8 Color Watercolor Palette

Once you have built a good foundation of six colors for your mixing palette you can start to expand your mixing possibilities with a few more paints. So to take things slightly further, here is my suggestion for an 8 color watercolor palette.

My own approach is to build upon the six colors in the split primary palette which offers a huge range of well saturated mixing possibilities. To build an eight color palette, the two paints which I would add are:

Phthalo green BS – Pigment number: PG7

Burnt umber – Pigment number: PBr7

Notice that Phthalo green is part of the secondary palette. And the split primary palette already includes French ultramarine. So I could just add Pyrrol orange to incorporate everything from the secondary palette with the split primary collection. But I find I don’t need to, because mixing Pyrrol scarlet and Hansa yellow (from the split palette) produces beautiful intense oranges !

So for this reason I choose to add a warm earth colored pigment to the palette.

Burnt umber is the darkest earth color and is extremely useful for landscapes.

Here is my recommended 8 color palette:

• Hansa Yellow Deep – Pigment number: PY65
• Lemon yellow – Pigment number: PY175
• ​Phthalo Green BS – Pigment number: PG7
• Phthalo blue GS – Pigment number: PB15:3
• French ultramarine – Pigment number: PB29
• Quinacridone rose – Pigment number: PV19
• Pyrrol scarlet – Pigment number: PR255
• ​Burnt umber – Pigment number: PBr7

This list of 8 paints is what I recommend to anyone starting out  with watercolor. You can mix just about any color you need with just these 8 colors. ​

Burnt Umber has a beautiful warm red-orange appearance, and I think it’s probably one of the best mixing colors you can add to your collection.

Apart from its usefulness for earth tones, Burnt umber mixed with French ultramarine is one of the easiest ways to mix very intense blacks and some interesting dark grays!

Adding a green paint to the palette can help to brighten up the otherwise dull mixed greens. On it’s own Phthalo green BS is a fairly unreal vivid green but when mixed it produces an extremely useful range of green hues. It mixes well with yellows and blues, and it’s actually the pigment you’ll find in a lot of pre-mixed green paints, like sap green, permanent green, olive green etc.

Here’s an example mixing chart using these 8 paints:

Experimenting with Limited Watercolors

You’d be surprised just how many wonderful hues you can mix with a small number of paints, so why burden yourself with too many choices.

Using only a handful of paints is also cheaper and easier to handle.

If you choose your paints wisely you should be able to mix an amazing range of colors with just a few paints.

Try experimenting your mixing capabilities with just a small number of paints from your collection. Use the guidelines above to try and pick the pigments which give you the highest amount of saturation when you mix them !

If you want more guidance on choosing paints, read this: “Watercolor paints – a complete guide”

The post Why Use a Limited Watercolor Palette? (And which Colors to Choose) first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve abandoned a painting because the colors weren’t working. And in my early days as an artist, I’m sure this had a lot to do with poorly chosen color schemes. It took me a while to realize that you can “design” the colors of your paintings to produce better results. The colors you choose don’t need to be a lifelike copy of the subject you’re painting, and simple tricks such as limiting your color palette or combining specific colors together can go a long way to creating more attractive, harmonious artwork.

I think you’ll find a little theory goes a long way…

Watercolor Color Theory

Colors are at the heart of any painting. Ideally, you should be controlling your choice of color rather than randomly picking what “looks nice” from your palette. Color theory and color design will help you do exactly that.

Bright vivid colors can be used to attract the eye and create focal points in a painting. For example, you can use bright colors to draw attention to the main subject of your artwork. On the other hand, muted colors can produce a calm, dreamlike quality. Too many dull colors may become boring so a few intense colors can help to balance a composition. Alternatively, contrasting colors can produce lively, uplifting artwork. As you can see, there are numerous ways to put color theory ideas to work for you.

But first, to help you get a better understanding of color theory we need a bit of artist’s vocabulary…

Understanding color theory

Any color can be described by using three distinct characteristics. These are the hue, the value and the intensity.

Hue is just another word for what we commonly call “color”. Hue names correspond to the colors of the spectrum: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. These are pure hues with the most intense color.

​Value is a way of referring to the lightness of a color. Good use of values in a painting helps to produce a realistic perception of three-dimensional form and light. Painters often use a gray scale ranging from light to dark (white to black) to help them judge values.

​Intensity is what artists often refer to as saturation. A bright color is highly saturated whereas a dull color has lower color saturation. Unsaturated color looks closer to black, gray or white. In watercolors you change the saturation in a few different ways. You can add more water to increase the amount of white paper showing through. Or you can add gray paint to the mixture or add a colors complementary color, which creates a more dull, muted color appearance. (A complementary color is any color on the opposite side of the color wheel – see below).

​Using the color wheel as an artist’s tool

Now that you’re familiar with the terms used to discuss color, let’s take a look at the artists favorite color tool. A color wheel is probably one of the most useful things you can paint and stick on your wall !

This is a tool that most artists use to help them with color. It’s a way of classifying colors in an easy to read format. The hues are organized according to the colors of the light spectrum (just like you see in a rainbow). A color wheel will help you design color schemes and also get a better understanding of paint mixing. If you’re not yet ready to paint your own color wheel you can find an excellent and easy to use ready-made color wheel here(check the reviews on Amazon).  

​The hues on a color wheel are structured into groups. First come primary colors, then secondary, and sometimes you also here people talk about tertiary colors.

Primary colors are at the top of the structure because in theory you can mix any other color you like using primaries. The primary colors are yellow, blue, and red. If you combine two primary colors together you get a secondary color. This makes sense, right? If you mix red and yellow you get orange, and so on. The secondary colors are green, purple, and orange. Next come tertiary colors. If you mix a primary color with a secondary color this produces a tertiary color. You can see the range of tertiaries in the color wheel.

Color Temperature in Watercolors

Very often you’ll here artists talk about color temperature, especially when they refer to their paints. Remember those “pure” hues we talked about. Well, it’s very tricky to find paints which have a pure color (the color appearance of the paint is restricted to the pigments used in the ingredients). As a result, most paints have what we refer to as a warm or a cool bias. For example, you can get warm yellows or cool yellows, each of which give different results when mixed with other paints.

The color wheel helps us categorize colors into warm or cool families. In general, warm colors contain more red, and cool colors contain more blue.

Warm colors can be grouped into yellow, orange and red. Cool colors are purple, blue, and green.

​Watercolor Color Schemes

Now comes the fun part!

Different combinations of colors lead to different types of color harmony. A harmonious color scheme will help to produce a sense of unity in your watercolors. You can plan ahead by choosing an appropriate color design depending on your subject and what you want to express, using your color wheel to help you find color associations and paint mixes.

Here are some of the better known color schemes to help you find color relationships that work for you!

Monochrome

The simplest color scheme in the world is monochromatic! By using a single color you’re guaranteed not to get any color conflict. This kind of painting can also be quite dramatic if you create highly contrasting values. Monochrome watercolor paintings are also a great way to study light and form.

Analogous

When you choose three or four neighboring colors on the color wheel, you get analogous colors. Associating colors like this tends to produce calming, harmonious results. You will also get bright vivid colors because of the close relationship between your paint hues. It’s only when you start mixing a complementary color (colors on the opposite side of the color wheel) that color mixes become muted and de-saturated. Analogous color schemes are one of the simplest ways to achieve pleasing color effects.

Complementary

Complementary colors have been mentioned earlier. Colors opposite each other on the color wheel produce the greatest hue contrast. Pairs of complementary colors usually work well together and produce strong compositions. The two colors “compliment” each other. You’ll often find complementary hues in nature (an orange sunset in a blue sky. Leafy green foliage with red flowers, etc.). In my opinion, some complementary color combinations work better than others, so make your own judgements before mechanically using two complementaries.

Split Complementary

A split complementary color scheme is a bit of a variation on the complementary. It makes use of the same visually contrasting hues, but softens the result slightly by using colors adjacent to the opposite complement. It adds more variation. When the colors are mixed together you get some good harmonies because each of the new colors contain some of the parent colors.

Complementary Analogous

I see this color scheme more as a variation on the analogous color relationship. As the name suggests, you take an analogous group of colors and then you add a complementary color. You get the benefits of both designs! Smooth harmonious analogous colors and a vivid contrasting complementary color. I think this works best when the complement is used only for a few touches of color here and there.

Primary Triads

A primary triad is a combination of three primary colors. The colors have a triangular relationship relative to each other and are spaced at equal distances around the color wheel. You can get some extraordinary vibrant results with this color scheme but you need to be careful. Mixing all the primaries together will result in dull muted colors. This kind of design works best if you let one of the colors dominate, and try to blend colors closest to each other to produce secondary mixes rather than muddy de-saturated colors.

Secondary Triads

As you have probably guessed, a secondary triad color scheme is similar to a primary triad, only this time you’re combining three secondary colors. The results can be quite surprising in the absence of any primary color. Again you may have better success if you choose a main color and use the other two for accent colors.

How to improve color harmony in your paintings

You don’t have to leave your colors to chance when painting in watercolors. With some careful thought you can enhance your work and produce some fantastic color relationships.

Here are a few tips on how to improve the color harmony of your artwork:

• ​Think about developing a color scheme before you start your painting.
• ​Use your imagination. You don’t just have to represent real-life colors.
• ​Take the time to experiment on a spare sheet of paper.
• ​Emphasize differences or similarities with analogous or complementary color schemes.
• ​Try limiting the number of colors you choose from your watercolor palette to increase harmony. You’ll still get a wide range of color mixes.
• ​Once you’ve chosen your colors, stick to them. Most color designs start to fail because the artist begins adding additional colors to the palette.
• ​You can unify the color scheme of a painting by using a glazing technique (layering washes of color on top of each other). You can either lay down a wash of one color as an underpainting, or glaze over the top of a painting when it’s completely dry. This has a unifying effect on the whole.
• ​Sometimes it’s a good idea to choose one color as the dominant hue. Use it in most of the other colors you mix and repeat the color frequently throughout the painting.

​There are so many beautiful color paints in watercolor painting. Using them wisely is just one of the things you can do to dramatically improve your masterpieces…

Now go and splash some paint (in a harmonious way of course) !

The post Watercolor Color Theory & Design that will Change Your Artwork first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

So how do you mix realistic skin tones in watercolor? Begin by finding the local color you want to mix, which is generally some variation of orange. With this information and the proper mixing method you can create any kind of flesh hue. To paint the shaded parts of skin, look closely to identify the correct tonal values, and use a complementary color to tone down your color mixes.

There is no right and wrong way to mix skin tones. But flesh colors do have some common color characteristics, which means that with the right approach and a few basic mixing recipes you can be up and painting faces in a flash!

Painting Realistic Watercolor Skin Tones

Whatever subject I’m painting, whether it’s a portrait or a landscape or a still life, I often refer back to the same basic principles of painting in watercolors. Those two basics are color mixing and values. If you can work these things out then the rest of the painting falls into place relatively easily. Funnily enough, your technique is much less important.

This is why I’m fascinated by color mixing, and probably why I talk about values all the time.

So with this in mind, I find that the best approach for mixing good skin colors for my paintings is as follows:

• Identify the local color
• ​Use the right mixing method
• Determine the correct tonal value.

The local color of flesh

A good starting point for painting skin is to ask “what is the local color of flesh”?

Most of the time the local color of skin could be described as orange in hue, which has a warm color temperature.

But the color of skin is influenced by many other factors and in particular by lighting. The local color will be modified depending on whether the subject is in light or shadow. And the color of the shaded parts aren’t always just a dark version of the local color. In fact in natural lighting, shadows will have a cool color appearance compared to the areas in light.

​So to create realistic skin tones, you can start by identifying the local color, and then create variations of this color to match the light and dark tones of your subject.

But what methods can you use to do this?

Skin Tone Mixing Method

A very useful tool for estimating which colors to mix is a watercolor color wheel(this works whatever subject your painting). If you’ve never painted one of these then it can be a very useful exercise for getting to know your paints.

It’s fairly easy to find your starting point for mixing skin tones using this device. If you take a look at a color wheel you can begin to see that most flesh colors are going to fall somewhere in the range of the orange hues. As you know this warm hue results from some kind of mix of red and yellow.

​So this is the fundamental starting point for any skin tone.

You can start your color mixing by combining different yellows and reds, or even browns (which are essentially very dark reds). Use a test sheet to see the results on paper.

Some parts of your painting might include some nice vivid colors, but others will have very light toned pinks, yellows, browns and oranges. In watercolor painting you have a few useful methods for achieving this variation.

To lighten the tone of a color do the following:

• ​Because watercolor is a transparent medium, to make lighter tones you just add water to your color mixture. A diluted puddle of paint is light toned because the white paper shows through to provide the white part of the color.

To tone down a color or increase it’s value you can do one of these two options:

• ​To creates strong bright valued colors we do the opposite and make a thick mix of paint.
• ​To tone down any color in watercolor you just add some of its complementary color

Take another look at the color wheel. A complementary color is any color which is on the opposite side of the color wheel. In our particular case, the complement of orange is a cool blue.

​This means that once you have selected a base color for skin, you simply use different concentrations of that color. Then, once you move into the shaded or shadow parts of the subject, you will need to darken the tones further, and this is best done by adding a complementary color.

Your color wheel is a useful tool to keep handy to help you with this mixing process.

When painting a portrait for example you want to add depth to your paintings with a full range of values and interesting colors. Mixing flesh tones in this three step process:

• Begin by mixing a local color.
• Vary the proportions to achieve a basic skin hue.
• Dilute the mixture to get a range of all the possible values from that mixture.
• To darken the tones further add a small amount of complementary blue.

There you go! You’re now a skin tone mixing expert.

Judging Skin Values

A color wheel is excellent for helping to mix colors, but there’s another good tip you can try to help you judge the values of your subject. Correct values, or the lightness and darkness of the shapes you paint, will make a big difference to the success of your painting.

An artist’s viewfinder is a great device to help you assess the correct values to paint. A viewfinder simply isolates a small part of your subject so you can better judge the value of any one part. This works whether your working from real life or a reference photo.

You can make viewfinders quite easily from a piece of old watercolor paper with a hole cut into it. Alternatively, I really like this composition finder which also includes a handy grayscale value chart (check the reviews on Amazon).

Watercolor Skin Tone Mixing Recipes

Let’s look at some real examples and a few mixing recipes to make quick realistic looking skin.

There’s more than one way to achieve the same hue. And it will largely depend on the palette of colors that you have available to you. You can use a whole range of analogous colors (colors which are close to each other on the color wheel) to mix your “orange” skin color. So just pick any warm or cool yellows, reds, and browns. The following are some typical combinations of colors that tend to produce good flesh hues.

Just a quick note about the following mixing chart. I use Daniel Smith watercolors because I love their handling properties and I find the colors to be very vibrant. So the paint names below refer to that range of watercolors. (I’ve included links to Amazon for some of the paint colors which I think are the most important).

Yellow ochre is one of the most popular colors in a skin tone mixing palette. Mixed with various reds such as Pyrrol Scarlet, Pyrrol Crimson, Burnt Sienna, and Burnt Umber. I also often use Hansa Yellow Deep, Raw Sienna and especially Quinacridone Rose(love that color)!

For toning down you can use a complementary cool blue color such as Phthalo Blue (GS), Cobalt Blue, or sometimes just Paynes Gray.

Whatever you do, don’t add Chinese white to lighten your tones. Just dilute your paint mix. I find Chinese white give a chalky appearance to the final paintings.

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Skin Tone Techniques and Painting Tutorial

Glazing is my favorite technique for painting this kind of subject. You can build up your image little by little, starting with the lightest tones. Just by adding multiple layers of color you can add depth and interesting texture to your work.

Let your imagination run free! You can also exaggerate and push color saturations beyond what would be realistic and get some very creative results!

Phew!

Now congratulate yourself for being a devoted artist and a skillful skin tone mixer!

The post Watercolor Skin Tone Tutorial: How to Mix Realistic Flesh Colors first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

So how do you make watercolor swatches?

It’s good practice to paint your swatches on the same watercolor paper you use for your watercolor paintings. For each swatch make a note of the brand, the paint name, and the pigments used in the paint formula. Paint a graded wash so you can see the full range of the paint’s color appearance, from fully saturated to diluted. You can also use your swatches to reveal characteristics such as transparency, staining properties and granulation.

To get the best out of your watercolor swatches feel free to try the step by step tutorial which I’ve described below. To help you out, you can also download the template I created for my own swatches.

There are hundreds of paints to choose from and they all have their own unique characteristics. Swatches are an excellent way to become more familiar with your own watercolors and understand their true qualities and color appearance. I’d encourage you to try making your own versions which you can add to as your collection of paints increases.

It’s good fun, and you never know, you might find some surprising results…

Watercolor Swatch Template

First of all let’s break down the different components of the template I made for swatching my watercolors. If you like the way this is done and you want to try this for yourself, you can download a copy of my template below and print it onto watercolor paper. Hopefully it’ll make the process slightly quicker ! (Simply download and save the PDF template, then load your printer with a sheet of watercolor paper. This works fine on my own printer with fairly thick 300 gsm paper).

​Download the watercolor swatch template here

Here you can see how I decided to organize each swatch for creating a test sample of each of my paints. The aim was to make the layout of the swatch cards as efficient and easy to make as possible. The swatch box is broken down into the following parts.

The Label:

I’ve made the label area big enough to contain all the written information you need to note down. I don’t see the point in having separate small boxes for each paint attribute, and you can get all your note taking done in one area. The important data I decided to put here include the paint name, the manufacturer, and the pigment numbers contained in the paint ingredients.

What Information to Include:

Sometimes you might not find all the information you need on the label of your paint tubes, or maybe you’re using pans and no longer have the label available. You can usually find all this data on the color charts provided by the paint manufacturers website(For example, I use Daniel Smith watercolors – you can find their color chart here). These color charts will give you lots of information you can copy onto your swatch cards if you feel it’s important. A reminder of the things you might want to note include:

• ​Brand
• ​Color name
• ​Pigment information
• ​Opacity
• ​Lightfastness or permanency rating
• ​Granulation
• ​Staining properties

Understanding Pigment Numbers:

Understanding which pigments have been added to your paint will also increase your familiarity with your watercolors. As artists we are essentially interested in color. The pigments in watercolor paints are noted in the form of color index numbers. These numbers have a prefix which indicate the color family that the pigment belongs to:

• ​PY Pigment Yellow
• ​PO Pigment Orange  
• ​PR Pigment Red
• ​PV Pigment Violet
• ​PB Pigment Blue
• ​PG Pigment Green
• ​PBr Pigment Brown
• ​PBk Pigment Black
• ​PW Pigment White

​Knowing how many pigments are included is also an interesting attribute to know, because watercolorists often prefer single pigment paints. Paints that contain multiple pigments have the reputation of producing less vivid color mixes, especially when mixed with other paints.

Abbreviations for Swatch Notes:

To simplify your notes you can use a code or abbreviation of some kind for the opacity, lightfastness, granulation and staining info. I’ve included the following legend on the template for this purpose:

• ​Transparency: T / S-T / O (transparent / semi-transparent / opaque)
• Lightfastness: i / ii / iii (​excellent / very good / fair)
• ​Granulating: Y / N (Yes / No)
• ​Staining: Y / N (Yes / No)

​It could be tempting just to print out a copy of the manufacturer’s color chart for reference, but keep in mind that this won’t give you a good feeling for the real life attributes and handling properties of your watercolor palette. Sorry – you still have to do the work of making all those swatches !

A box for painting a Graded Swatch of Color

This is the space for painting a color swatch using a graded wash of your chosen paint. The reason you want to paint a graded wash is so that you can see the full range of color from full color saturation of the pigments (often referred to as the masstone) and the lightest pastel color(usually called the tint).

Try to make the size of the swatch large enough to get a good visual appreciation of the paints color and attributes. Mine are 1and 1/2 inchs (38 mm) wide by 2 inches (50 mm) tall.

An Indelible Line for Testing Transparency

This is a typical way of evaluating the opacity or transparency of watercolor paints. Transparency is generally indicated by manufacturers as either transparent, semi-transparent, or opaque. Painting over this line gives us a visual measure of the paints real transparency.

This attribute is useful to know because traditionally watercolor artists aim for the most transparent paints possible. Watercolor paintings are frequently built up in layers, with each new layer of paint adding more intensity and deepening the tones of the painting. This layering (known as glazing) is best achieved with transparent paints. Truly transparent paints allow the underlying colors and the white paper to shine through.

An area for testing lifting properties

This is the part of the swatch used as a lifting test area to get an idea of the staining properties of the paint. A non staining paint will lift easily whereas a highly staining paint will be difficult to lift. You may have already noted the staining information in the notes at the top, but this gives you a true visual assessment of the paint’s lifting behaviour.

This is a useful characteristic to note. For example, non-staining paints that lift off too easily may not be very good for glazing, since each new glaze of paint would lift the underlying layers of color.

Wet in wet diffusion test

This is a way to assess the paints behaviour for wet on wet painting situations. The activity of pigments in a wet wash can vary depending on pigment particle size, granulation and the quantity of pigments in the paint. We are looking for things like, how far does the paint spread in a wet in wet wash, or does the pigment separate into two colors (this can occur with a mix of different pigments).

​Swatch Format

I scratched my head about this for a while!

First of all, ask yourself how you want to organize your swatches? I see a lot of artists organizing swatches by brand. However, I think this system can get complicated when you add more paints to your collection. I chose to organize the swatches by color, regardless of the brand being testing.

Some people paint individual swatch cards and put them on a ring binder, or keep them in a large binder file with transparent sleeves to contain the cards. This is quite a neat method, but I find it makes the process longer because you have to cut up all the individual cards. (If you do opt to make a lot of individual cards then I recommend you use a paper cutter to speed up the process).

For me, the objective of swatches is to clearly show the differences between your different paints, and as a comparison between colors as if you were in a real life painting situation.

A better system seems to be to paint your swatches on individual sheets, such as the ones I created here. The advantage is that you can create sheets for each color family and compare similar hues more easily. You also don’t have to cut up a load of individual cards. Just print out a new sheet when you need one. You may not fill in all of the swatches on each page, but that’s fine. It leaves room to come back and add a new color when your paint collection grows.

Keep in mind that paint will have a different appearance depending on the watercolor paper, so it’s important to use the same paper you use for your actual paintings. I use Arches cold pressed paper for most of my artwork. The paper’s color, sizing, texture, etc., will all have an effect on the final color appearance.

How to Make Watercolor Swatches

When painting your swatches, try to make all samples as similar as possible so you have consistent results for comparison. Use a constant amount of water and mix a reasonably thick puddle of paint, making sure the water and pigment mix well. You can always try making three swatches for the same color as a test. If the results are quite similar then you know that your method is fairly consistent.

Start by drawing a horizontal line near the top of the color swatch using a Sharpie or other type of waterproof pen. Leave a space above this line for the lifting test.

Write the brand name, paint color name, pigment numbers and any other information you want to note at the top of each swatch.

Paint your swatch using a graded wash technique. I find it easier to use a small number 12 flat brush for this. Start at the top of the box with a thick mix of paint to show the mass tone. Progressively graduate the wash as you move down the paper. Do this by dipping your brush in water, and blotting the brush to remove excess moisture, then apply a new brush stroke underneath the previously laid color. Don’t worry about trying to paint a perfectly smooth wash. I think an imperfect wash helps reveal the handling qualities of the paint.

The top of you wash should show the mass tone and the bottom the tint (dark to light). Increase the mass tone if needed with another pass of paint so you get a well saturated color.

When you paint over the impermeable ink line this helps reveal the transparency of the paint. Observe the paint as you apply the color, the differences in transparency should be quite obvious with semi-transparent and opaque paints covering the line more.

The small box underneath the swatch color is for testing the wet in wet behavior of the paint. Pre-wet this box with clear water, then dab some color into one side of the box only. Watch the pigment activity to see how fast or slow the pigments spread in the clear water. this will continue for a while until the paper dries and gives an indication of how lively the paint is in wet in wet painting conditions.

Leave your paint swatches to dry for a while, ideally overnight. The final stage is to test the staining properties of each paint (otherwise known as permanency). For this I used a cotton swab dipped in clear water. Blot the cotton swab so there’s not a huge amount of water, then rub it in the area over the top of your indelible ink line. Do this 4 or five times, always rubbing with the same horizontal stroke (use the same amount of rubbing strokes on each swatch or the results will be skewed). Try to avoid scrubbing back and forth. If you rub too hard the paper may start to disintegrate.

That’s it !

You now have a bunch of swatches which fairly reliably show the paint attributes of your colors.

Looking at the Results of your Swatches

If you’ve been using your watercolors for a while you probably already have an idea how they perform. The results of your swatches may help confirm some of your suspicions about iffy colors and those which are a pleasure to work with !

For example, take a look at the swatch for Cerulean Blue. This paint is semi-transparent, very granular, and non-staining. For me personally, these properties all together make it a color which is difficult to handle. The pigments just seem to swim around on the surface of the paper without fixing, which I find unpleasant. This is due to the low permanency of the paint. It’s also quite opaque making it a poor color for glazing.

​Use your swatches as an opportunity to judge your watercolors objectively against each other. It will probably help confirm your favorite paints, and maybe prompt you to replace some badly behaving colors !

The post How to Make Watercolor Swatches like a Boss first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

Glazing or layering colors is a fundamental technique in watercolor painting. When you paint, the transparent layers of pigment build up, one on top of the other. This layering of paint modifies the values and the color appearance of the final painting.

Yellow glazed with blue will create a green color. Yellow glazed with red makes orange. Yellow glazed with yellow makes a deeper toned yellow, etc.

But some paint combinations can be surprising. And this is where a glazing chart becomes a very useful tool. It can be done very quickly at the beginning of each painting session. Or you can take your time and create glazing charts of all your paints for future reference.

Either way, a color chart of this kind is an incredibly useful planning tool, helping you to predict the results of different paint combinations when painting and glazing with watercolors.

So how do you make a watercolor glazing chart ?

A typical glazing chart is made up of vertical and horizontal painted lines. Each line is a brushstroke of color for one specific paint. First you paint all the colored lines in one direction, and you let them dry completely. Then you paint the same colors in the other direction, glazing them over the top of the first set of lines. The resulting chart shows how your colors blend when layered on top of each other.

Below I’ll talk about why you might find it interesting to make your own charts and give you some step by step instructions on how to go about it!

Personally, I love color mixing, so as well as being useful, I find these exercises fun and relaxing…

Note: Read this article for a more in-depth overview of watercolor glazing.

Why make a glazing chart?

When I first started painting I didn’t realize the benefits of this type of chart. Yes… I understood that watercolors are transparent and that my artwork is essentially built up with successive layers of paint. For me, the ability to see the underlying shapes and brushstrokes is one of the things that makes watercolors such a beautiful and unique art form.

But what I didn’t appreciate was how different paints react with each other when glazed. And when planning a new project, this can affect your choice of paints.

The thing is, watercolor paints all have different mixing qualities. And there’s a huge range of diverse paints which interact with each other differently when mixed on the paper. For example a cool blue mixed with a cool red gives a very different appearance to a cool blue plus a warm red.

This is all the more true because of the varying properties of each individual paint. Paints all have diverging characteristics such as granulation, staining and transparency. For example an opaque pigment glazed over a transparent pigment can almost completely blot out the underlying color. The resulting color is also less vivid compared to glazing with two transparent paints. The staining properties of paint also need to be considered. Certain families of pigments such as the Quinacridones are highly staining, meaning that they adhere to the paper surface and are difficult to lift off. On the other hand, pigments in the Cadmium family are non-staining, and can easily lift off the paper, making them more difficult to use for glazing. The general advice is to apply staining pigments before using non-staining paints.

Glazing chart preparation & materials

First things first. I recommend you use a flat brush for painting your chart. This is because you want to be able to paint a fairly thick line in a single brush stroke. As just mentioned, different paints are more or less staining. If you paint each line with repeated brushing you risk lifting the underlying paint and the colors will bleed together.

If you’re feeling neat and organized, you’ll need a pencil and ruler to draw your grid.

If you want the best results, use a sheet of good quality watercolor paper. Glazing just works better when you use decent quality paper. The colors will be more vibrant and closer to what you’d expect when doing an actual painting.

For my chart I selected a warm and cool color for each primary color. I think this shows a good example of the discrepancies between warm and cool color mixing. However you should use whichever colors you need to test.

Two jars of water are also very useful. I use one jar for rinsing and another as a supply of clear water for mixing. This helps to avoid color contamination when changing from one color to the next, especially when painting the lighter hued yellows.

How to make your watercolor glazing chart

• ​Begin by preparing a grid for your glazing chart. With a ruler and pencil, mark out the horizontal and vertical lines. Draw one vertical and horizontal line for each color.
• ​The width of the lines depends on the width of your brush. Since you want to be able to paint each line with one single stroke, it’s a good idea to make each line the same with as your flat brush. Leave a small gap between each line. This prevents overlapping colored lines from bleeding into each other.

• ​Prepare your chosen watercolors. Either squeeze out a fresh spot of paint from a tube, or if your using pans, make sure each color is clean by rinsing them with clear water. Mix a thin wash for each of your colors. If your paint is too thick the glazing will be difficult to see.
• ​I recommend you start painting with the lightest hues first, in my case the yellows. Make sure your brush is completely clean since yellow is so easily contaminated with any residual color on your brush or in your palette.

• ​Prepare your chosen watercolors. Either squeeze out a fresh spot of paint from a tube, or if your using pans, make sure each color is clean by rinsing them with clear water. Mix a thin wash for each of your colors. If your paint is too thick the glazing will be difficult to see.
• ​I recommend you start painting with the lightest hues first, in my case the yellows. Make sure your brush is completely clean since yellow is so easily contaminated with any residual color on your brush or in your palette.

• ​When you’ve painted all of the colored lines in one direction, leave them to dry thoroughly! Yep… This is where you need to be patient. If you paint over the first lines while they’re still wet, the colors will lift and bleed, and the glazing effect will be lost (hint: you can always use a hairdryer to speed things up).
• ​When the paint has dried, paint your colored lines in the other direction using a single continuous pass of the brush. This is the most delicate part, but if you avoid scrubbing your brush over the underlying paint all will be good!

• ​Finish the chart by making a note of the paint names for each of the colors. If you want to learn more about the properties of your watercolors, I suggest you also make a note of the pigments used in each paint, and possibly their transparency and the level of staining.

​That’s it! Now you have a handy chart that shows you what to expect when combining glazes of your paints!

Tips for glazing with watercolors

As you have probably guessed, glazing is primarily a transparent watercolor technique. For the best results when glazing, most artists therefore recommend that you use only transparent watercolors(not semi-opaque or opaque). Opaque paints tend to look chalky or muddy when they dry. This is easier said than done, since finding a good palette of colors that reunite the best qualities of watercolor paints can be tricky (if you’d like help choosing paints which have the best characteristics then take a look at my selection here).

This technique also requires a light touch because as far as possible you don’t want to disturb the underlying layers of paint. Try not to scrub, and don’t repeatedly brush the previous layers. Try to be aware of the staining properties of your watercolors so that you can paint in the correct order (highly staining first, non-staining last).

Remember that with glazing, the more layers of paint you apply, the more intense the hue and value the final color becomes. The whites and light tones in watercolor come from the paper itself. For these reasons it is usually good practice to work from light to dark, applying thin, light washes first and gradually building up the intensity of your painting. It’s easy to add another glaze to make an area of your painting darker, but not so easy to make things lighter!

Finally, glazing is a wet on dry technique. Each layer of paint should be left to dry thoroughly before applying a new glaze. This doesn’t mean you can’t combine this technique with wet on wet painting. For example you could paint a background using wet on wet then glaze the rest of your subject. Just make sure the underlying paint is completely dry before glazing.

If you’re the impatient type, then it’s probably a good idea to keep a hairdryer handy to speed up the drying process. Just don’t use a high heat and burn your paper!

The post How to paint a watercolor glazing chart first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

“ That doesn’t look right ! ”

Purple is one of those tricky colors in watercolor mixing. And to be honest I didn’t always understand why my attempts to make purple turned out so bad. I wondered if it was the quality of my watercolors or maybe something in the paint formula which made my purple so murky.

Surely, achieving a bright vivid purple shouldn’t be so difficult.

After all, everybody knows blue+red = purple… Right?

Purple, violet, magenta, mauve… Call it what you like. A lot of artists struggle to get just the right purple mixture.

So ​how ​do you make purple watercolor?

Mixing intense and bright purple with watercolors depends on the color bias of the paints you are using. All paints have a warm or a cool bias. In short, the best results for mixing saturated purple are obtained using cool reds. 

I honestly didn’t get this for a long time ! But after I gained a little bit of mixing knowledge it became plain and clear.

Here are a few things every watercolorist should know about purple watercolor:

Purple and the color wheel

To understand why it’s so difficult to mix a decent purple color we need to talk about color theory.

Don’t worry… I’ll try to make this as painless as possible !

To illustrate how color theory works we’re going to be using a color wheel. Color wheels are very useful tools to help us understand color mixing.

​The concept of color temperature can be easily seen on the color wheel below. Warm colors include yellows, oranges and reds. Cool colors are comprised of purples blues and greens.

This idea is quite intuitive… For example, blue is easily perceived as cool, and red as warm, etc.

The color appearance of your paints all have a temperature bias. A cool paint color will lean towards the cool side of the color wheel and vice versa.

For example Phthalo blue (GS) has a cool bias because it contains some green. But French Ultramarine has a warm color appearance because it contains some red.

The following color wheel uses two versions of each primary color, both a warm and a cool version.

The color wheel helps us identify the color bias of our hues. If you look carefully Phthalo blue (GS) is closer to green and further away from red. It is closer to a cool color, therefore this ​makes it a cool blue.

In a similar way, French Ultramarine is closer to red and further away from green. This makes French Ultramarine a warm blue.

Complementary color mixing rule

Now that you are able to distinguish warm and cool hues, we need to talk about complementary color mixing.

A complementary color is any color located on the opposite side of the color wheel from your target color. Take another peak at the color wheel, you’ll see that the complementary color of purple is yellow.

The complementary mixing rule tells us that if you mix two complementary colors, they neutralize each other. A neutralized color is a desaturated color such as grey or black.

So in general, when you mix purple and yellow paints you get a neutral brown color which has been desaturated.

How to make a vivid purple watercolor mixture

OK… Now that you have a grasp of color temperature and complementary color mixing we can demonstrate how to create a nice saturated purple with your watercolors.

If you want to mix bright saturated purple you need to mix the two primary colors closest to purple. In this case, cool red (Quinacridone Rose) and warm blue (French Ultramarine).

So why does this combination of warm blue and cool red produce a nice saturated mix ?

Well, if you remember, the complement of purple is yellow.

So the more yellow you mix with purple the more dull and desaturated it becomes.

Cool red and warm blue are the furthest away from yellow. Therefore by mixing these two colors together we keep any traces of the unwanted primary yellow out of our mixture.

​Cool red + warm blue = saturated purple

To mix a very saturated purple you use those primary colors which are closest to purple, and furthest away from yellow on the color wheel, therefore avoiding purple’s complementary neutralizing color.

You’ll find a list of my personal paint recommendations here.

The secondary color purple

Color theory tells us that purple is a secondary color and to mix it we need to combine red and blue.

So much for the theory.

This standard formula is true to a certain extent, but artists mix paints, not colors.

Pigments are the real carriers of color in paints, and each paint produces its own unique color appearance, and mixing results.

As watercolor artists we need all kinds of purples. Dull purples produce beautiful rich shade and shadow areas while brilliant lively purple creates intensity and focus.

The key is understanding how to mix the right purple for the right occasion.

So what are the color combinations for mixing desaturated dark purples or bright vivid purples ?

Let’s take a look at what happens when you mix together different variations of warm and cool blues and reds.

​As you can see the best results for mixing bright purples come from using cool red. But warm reds (because they are closer to yellow), will neutralize the mix.  You will always get a dull color purple using a warm red. These colors are nice in their own way, and can add beautiful richness and dark ​values to your paintings (far better than just using pure black).

The brightest purples come from hues of reds and blues which are closest to purple. So this means warm blues and cool reds.

As you have probably figured out by now,  what is often poorly understood is the concept of color temperature. In practice the results of mixing different red and blue pigments produces a wide range of beautiful purples. But the general strategy of red+blue does not always give us a pure saturated purple.

The colors I used for the above test chart are as follows:

• ​Cool red: Quinacridone Rose
• ​Warm red: Pyrrol Scarlet
• ​Cool blue: Phthalo Blue (GS)
• chevron-right​Warm blue: French Ultramarine

​A quick word of caution.

The color name on a paint doesn’t tell you want is in the paint recipe. Pigments are what produce the final rendered color.

It’s a good idea to get into the habit of learning or at least making note of the pigments contained in your different paints so you don’t get too many surprises when mixing !

Purple direct from the tube

I’ll let you into a secret…

I have a range of purples in my collection for when I’m feeling lazy !

Understanding how to mix different purples gives you so much freedom.

But from time to time you just want to grab a specific purple color directly from the tube – Quinacridone Violet is one of my favorites !

You’ll find many pigment alternatives to choose from if you want a tube of yellow, red or even green watercolor.

But there are relatively few pigment alternatives for purple.

As painters we all want to find the best pigments for specific hues. So if you’re looking for a good purple to use as a convenience color then you can’t go far wrong with the ones I’ve listed below.

Although this list is not exhaustive, I’ve indicated the pigments used in each paint formula to help you identify similar paints from alternative brands.

I try to stick to a set of quality guidelines when choosing my paints, so all of the examples listed here are transparent, single pigment paints, with good or excellent lightfastness ratings. A large number of manufacturers produce purples which are convenience mixtures of two red and blue pigments. For example the Daniel Smith color “Rose of Ultramarine” is a mix of the pigments PV19 and PB29 (Quinacridone Rose + French Ultramarine), which is exactly what ​I used in ​the tests above to make bright purple.

All these highly recommended pigments are versatile, and handle well in watercolors.

If you’re not accustomed to pigment names, purple pigments are denoted as “PV” (Pigment Violet). “PR” means Pigment Red.

Another thing I have noticed, if you like granulating watercolors, a large number of purple pigment paints are granulating…

A few recommended purple paints​

Daniel Smith Quinacridone Lilac ( Pigment PR122 )

An intense red-purple color, and probably the strongest hue of any red-purple pigment available in watercolors. “Quinacridones” are a family of beautiful highly colorful pigments which all share the same excellent lightfastness and transparency. Quinacridones handle beautifully in washes and mix with other paints extremely well.

Daniel Smith Quinacridone Rose ( Pigment PV19 )

This paint is great for mixing very bright warm colors and purples, and as you can see from the tests above, it’s valuable as a “primary” cool red in a limited color palette. This is probably one of the most versatile and widely used rose pigments.

Daniel Smith Quinacridone Violet ( Pigment PV19 )

A darker valued, slightly warmer purple hue. When used wet on wet it is very ‘energetic’ and can produce some interesting blooms.

M. Graham Dioxazine Violet ( Pigment PV23 )

This is a very dark valued slightly dull purple color. The PV23 pigment is lightfast and highly staining. The color appearance is very similar with other brands of paint using the same pigment.

Daniel Smith Quinacridone Pink  ( Pigment PV42 )

Not available from many manufacturers, this color is very similar to Quinacridone Rose. Tests have shown that it is slightly less lightfast, but it mixes wonderful bright purples like the PV19 pigment in Quinacridone Rose. If you have to choose between the two, PV19 would be a better option.

Daniel Smith Cobalt Violet Deep  ( Pigment PV14 )

A medium value purple color, this pigment is non-staining and has excellent lightfastness. When this paint dries it shifts slightly towards red. Apparently this pigment is quite rare, making it more expensive. Beware of cheaper paints with the same generic name, which may not contain the real pigment.

Daniel Smith Ultramarine Red ( Pigment PV15 )

This is a medium to dark purple color. The color appearance of paints with this pigment seems to vary slightly from one brand to another. This one from Daniel Smith is a lovely deep blue purple.

Daniel Smith Cobalt Violet ( Pigment PV49 )

A light purple violet color, probably what some would call “fuchsia”. I quite like the granulating quality of this pigment.

Daniel Smith Quinacridone Purple  ( Pigment PV55 )

This is a lush deep purple color and as far as I can tell, the use of the pigment PV55 is exclusive to Daniel Smith. It’s a rich transparent color almost like a burgundy wine color.

Conclusion

The “purple dilemma” is not really a problem if you can grasp the fundamental principles of color theory and make use of the color wheel to assist your color mixing choices.

For accurate color mixing it is important to understand how the position of hues on a color wheel affect the mixed color appearance. And if you keep in mind the rule of complementary mixing then you’ll find it easy to choose the right pigments for your desired color.

By the way… Purple continues to be one of my favorite colors !

The post How to make a perfect purple with watercolor first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

Not knowing how to mix the color you need…

When I first started painting I really didn’t understand how to mix watercolors and get exactly the right hue that I needed. I would simply rely on intuition, throw a few pigments together and hope for the best !

Eventually, I started to get interested in color theory and watercolor mixing recipes. I did experiments, and I painted color charts to test the mixing range of my palette. And little by little this helped me develop a better understanding of how to use my paint.

Are you sick and tired of trying to mix the same color you made yesterday, but you just can’t remember which pigments you used?

Well, keep reading and hopefully all will become clear.

Do you want to master watercolor mixing ?

Knowing how to mix your watercolors is essential, and being able to mix colors quickly and easily is a real bonus. Color mixing is as easy as riding a bike. It really isn’t that difficult, it just takes a bit of practice.

I’ve put together the following tips and exercises to help you build a foundation in watercolor mixing. Learning basic color mixing can be inspiring and having confidence in your color mixing abilities is one of the keys to successful and enjoyable painting.

I’ve done my best to make this article as clear as possible without getting too technical ! Here are the different elements explained in this guide. Feel free to skip the parts you already know:

Color theory: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colors

Color theory… Argh ! Sounds boring right ?

Don’t’ be put off – it’s not as bad as it sounds ! The better you know some basic color theory, the more easily and quickly you’ll be able to mix colors from your palette.

The basics of color theory can be clearly understood by means of a color wheel​:

The color wheel is an incredibly useful tool for watercolor artists. It shows us what color can be produced by mixing adjacent colors with each other. Traditional color wheels are made up of three categories of colors: primary, secondary and tertiary.

It all begins with primary colors.

The primary colors are the starting point for any color wheel.

• ​yellow
• ​red
• ​blue

Primary colors are the foundation of color mixing because these three color pigments cannot be mixed by the combination of any other colors.

Next we have secondary colors. Most of us are already familiar with these simple mixing formulas:

• ​yellow + red = orange
• ​red + blue = purple
• ​blue + yellow = green

​The final category is tertiary colors. These are achieved by mixing the primary and secondary colors which are adjacent to each other on the color wheel:

• ​yellow + orange = yellow-orange
• ​red + orange = red-orange
• ​red + purple = red-purple
• ​​​blue + purple = blue-purple
• ​​​​blue + green = blue-green
• ​​​yellow + ​green= ​yellow-green

​(note: traditionally the naming convention for tertiary colors always begins with the primary color, then the secondary: red-orange, yellow-green, etc.)

All this talk about color theory is useful to understand but it’s somewhat abstract because it applies to pure colors and ignores the reality of actual paints mixed together to make new colors.

The color appearance of paint relies on the pigments they contain. There are lots of different yellows, reds, blues, greens or purples made from different single pigments. You may already have a large collection to choose from.

But the pigments used in paints don’t always produce a pure color appearance. Most of the colors that you have in your collection have a color bias. Most artists refer to paint hues as warm or cool depending on their color bias.

What are warm and cool colors ?

It’s pretty simple:

Warm colors are those that are situated on one side of the color wheel and include yellow, orange, and red.

Cool colors are on the opposite side of the color wheel and include purple, blue, and green.

Any color can have a warm or cool bias.

Yes… That’s right ! Any color. So for example you can have warm reds and cool reds, warm blues and cool blues, etc.

This is where a lot of people get confused. How do you identify whether a color is warm or cool ?

Color wheels can help us with this. The color wheel below is based on two sets of primary colors. There’s a warm and a cool version of each primary color. So we have a warm and a cool yellow, a warm and a cool red, etc. I’ve also painted the secondary color mixes in between each set of primary colors.

The position of a color on the color wheel ​represents whether it is warm or cool:

For example, look at the warm red. You have to ask yourself, “does this color tend more towards orange/yellow or does it tend towards purple/blue” Depending on which side of the color wheel it inclines, this tells us whether it is warm or cool.

The warm red has more of a yellow/orange bias. Yellow and orange are on the warm side of the color wheel, so this particular hue is “warm”.

We can do the same exercise with the cool red. If you look closely, you can see that this color leans more towards the purple/blue side of the color wheel. This particular red therefore has a cool bias.

The same type of classification can be done with any of your paint colors. Using a color ​warmth as a guide, you can judge whether the color appearance of a paint is biased towards the warm or cool side of the color wheel.

Mixing pure saturated secondary colors

Even though color theory tells us that red+blue = purple, not every red mixed with every blue makes a pure purple.

As mentioned above, your paints can have a warm or cool bias. Let’s say you want to mix a pure green color. The simple mixing recipe yellow + blue can sometimes produce surprising results, depending on the color bias of the paints you choose:

So, do you know how to mix a saturated secondary color such as a pure saturated green or saturated purple ?

Take another look at the color wheel we used earlier:

This is what could be labeled as a “pure saturated” color wheel. The aim of this chart  is to show you how to mix pure saturated secondary colors.

To make it you need both a warm and cool version of each primary color, so six primaries in total.

​As you can see above, the secondary colors, orange, purple, and green are bright and saturated.

To mix them you need to use a specific combination of two primary colors:

• To mix a very saturated orange you use the primary colors which are closest to orange:  ​warm yellow + warm red
• To mix a very saturated purple you use those primary colors which are closest to purple: ​​cool red + warm blue
• ​To mix a very saturated green you use primary colors which are closest to green: ​​cool blue + cool yellow

​​​You may be wondering what happens if you break this formula and mix different primary colors together. For example if you mix a cool blue and a warm yellow you get the following mixture:

As you can see, this produces a attractive olive green appearance, ​but it’s nothing like the saturated green mixture.

This is the reason why the foundation of most artists watercolor palettes is built on a selection of warm and cool primary colors. In theory you can mix any color you need using just these primary colors. This is often what watercolorists refer to as a limited palette.

Mixing neutralized hues using compound colors

A vast range of mixing can be achieved with a small number of paints.

You now know how to mix pure saturated secondary colors by combining the two primary pigments closest to the desired secondary color on the color wheel.

But often we need to reproduce a desaturated or muted version of a color like a muted green or desaturated orange.

​You can obtain neutral colors by mixing combinations of warm and cool primary colors which are located further away from the desired color on the color wheel. Mixing in this way produces compound colors. These are colors which include a trace of all three primary colors

Let’s take the example of ​purple.

You can create a muted compound ​purple by using the primaries furthest from ​purple on the color wheel:

For instance, mixing  warm red +  cool blue produces a ​desaturated neutralized ​purple:

The same is true for the other secondary colors. A muted compound orange can be achieved by mixing yellows and reds further away from orange on the color wheel:

Neutralized compound purples comes from mixing reds and blues further away from purple on the color wheel:

Mixing neutralized hues using complementary colors

Using the same six primary colors you can push your color mixing further by implementing complementary color mixing. This method allows you to neutralize and desaturate your colors to produce a vast range of grays and earth tones.

A complementary color is any color on the opposite side of the color wheel.

The complement of yellow is purple.

The complement of red is green.

When you mix any color with its complementary color you get a neutralized gray or earth hue.

Here are a couple of examples:

As a quick rule of thumb, try to remember the following complementary combinations:

As a quick rule of thumb, try to remember the following complementary combinations:

• Yellow + Purple
• ​Red + Green
• ​Blue + Orange

​Using a limited color palette

As you probably now realize, the primary colors yellow, red, and blue, are the backbone of any watercolor palette. Primary paint colors are an indispensable part of your palette because you cannot mix primaries from any other paint colors. Almost every possible color mixture can be obtained using just a few primary color paints.

And the best way to set up your watercolor palette is to begin with a variety of warm and cool primary colors.

If you’re starting out with watercolors, you want to become a better artist, and you have a small budget, you could begin with a limited palette of just six colors.

Painting with a limited palette also has the advantage of creating color harmony in your work. What’s more, a limited palette is also good practise for you color mixing confidence. You have to work a little bit harder to mix a specific color but you will learn a great deal about color along the way.

You’ll be amazed just how many colors can be produced using just six primary hues such as these:

• ​New Gamboge (warm yellow)
• Lemon Yellow (cool yellow)
• ​Pyrrol Scarlet (warm red)
• Quinacridone Rose (cool red)
• French Ultramarine (warm blue)
• ​Phthalo Blue (GS) (cool blue)

The chart below illustrates this mixing range:

(Note: this chart is just the tip of the iceberg. They show mixtures in a ratio of 50%/50%. You can achieve a multitude of other color appearances by varying the paint ratios).

Using the color wheel as a guide to mixing

Rather than relying on improvisation to mix your colors, you can use a color wheel as a guide to point you in the right direction.

Here’s a step by step example of how to do this.

Let’s say you want to reproduce a color similar to Raw Sienna​.

First locate the approximate hue you want to mix on the circumference of the color wheel. Raw Sienna is a warm color somewhere between red and yellow. This hue is probably more yellow than red, so your starting point on the color wheel would be yellow-orange.

Having made these judgements I can now locate my target color on the color wheel.

Now you need to estimate the approximate saturation of your target color. Raw Sienna isn’t brightly saturated. It’s more like a dull, neutralized yellow-orange.

​To neutralize a color we mix it with its complementary color on the opposite side of the color wheel. Take another look at the color wheel to locate the complementary color (in this case blue).

So my target color has a hue which is located somewhere between yellow and orange and ​​is slightly desaturated by adding blue.

Here is a swatch of Raw Sienna taken directly from a tube of paint:

To mix this color I start with a warm yellow (New Gamboge) and I mix in a small amount of warm red (Pyrrol Scarlet). Remember, I want more yellow than red. This gives me my yellow-orange base.

Next I need to neutralize the color slightly. To do this I added a very small amount of warm blue (French Ultramarine). I ​mix a small amount at a time so as not to desaturate the color too severely:

​80% New Gamboge + 15% Pyrrol Scarlet +5% French Ultramarine

Here is the resulting mixture next to the swatch of pure Raw Sienna from a tube:

Not bad eh ?

With a bit of practice, and by using your color wheel as a reference guide, you can easily mix just about any color you need from a good set of primary paints !

Tonal Adjustments

Tone is the relative lightness or darkness of a color.

With watercolors, the brightest most saturated colors are the pure pigments that come straight from the tubes. You cannot make these colors any brighter.

This kind of saturated color is said to have a strong tonal value.

If you want to “tone down” your colors to make them lighter, it’s simply a matter of adding more water to dilute the mixture and thereby lighten the tones.

Because watercolor paint is a transparent medium the lightness of a color comes from the underlying white paper.

It’s possible that you have a tube of white or black paint in your watercolor collection. You may be tempted to use one of these to darken or lighten your colors. But black or white paint will deaden your colors.

In watercolor painting you control the level of tone by changing the ratio of paint to water.

Correct tone is one of the essential components to successful painting. If the relative tones in your scene are true, you can produce a believable sense of space, light and form.

Making a tonal steps chart like the one ​above is an excellent way to practice paint to water ratios to accurately reproduce a desired tonal value. I recommend you give this a try. it’s actually not as easy as it looks, but it’s an excellent way to help you understand and control tone.

Mixing Tips

Phew ! If you’ve got this far then well done !

Hopefully you now have a basic understanding of watercolor mixing.

To round up this article, here are some bonus tips about how to successfully mix your watercolors:

• ​Whatever colors you are mixing, transfer colors to your mixing puddle little by little. It’s easy to add more paint, but can’t take paint away. Gradually push the color towards the desired hue.
• ​Add a good amount of paint to your palette in the beginning.
• ​Find the required hue first, then adjust the tone later on.
• ​Don’t add too much water to begin with. Start with a good amount of concentrated paint, then change the tone as needed by diluting your mixture. If your mixture becomes watery too quickly you’ll have to start again.
• ​When you rinse your brush, squeeze out some water to avoid diluting your mixture.
• ​Practice mixing often ! The more you do the better you’ll become !

​(Click here to download a cheatsheet of all the color mixing possibilities using six warm and cool primary colors)

The post The Essential Guide to Watercolor Mixing first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

Those beautiful looking watercolor charts with a rainbow of fantastic colors.

It’s only natural that you want to make one yourself. That’s exactly how I felt when I began my adventure into watercolors.

So I looked for a simple tutorial about how to make my own watercolor mixing chart. But the more I searched, the more confused I got !

There are loads of different types of color charts.

And some of them are not very clearly explained.

On top of that, different artists seem to have different ways of making them… I ended up looking at a lot of charts !

But it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Making watercolor charts is a lot of fun and it’s a very instructive exercise.

I’m going to explain the different types of watercolor charts you will commonly find and how to make a perfect watercolor chart that will serve as a reference for all your future projects.

The different types of watercolor mixing chart

• ​The color wheel – This is a fundamental chart for understanding primary color mixing.
• ​The mixing chart – Read this article to find out more !
• ​The glazing chart – This chart shows you how your paints work together when glazing.
• ​The dual color mixing chart – These charts mix only two colors but in different paint ratios.
• ​The value chart – These help you to learn the proportion of water needed to mix colors of different values, from light to dark tones.
• ​The palette chart – A useful chart to keep in your palette as a visual guide to the real color appearance of your paints.
• ​Watercolor swatches – these “charts” are for testing single paints and provide a reference which describe the characteristics of your individual paints.

What’s the purpose of a watercolor chart ?

Have you ever been puzzled about what colors to mix in a particular situation ?

Watercolor charts are all about mastering mixing. These simple charts help you learn how to mix your collection of paints and remember which ones you need to reproduce a particular hue.

I’m always surprised by the huge variety of colors that can be created from just a few tubes of paint. If you do this exercise it will help you understand how your own paints work together. You’re going to do a lot of mixing ! But that’s the whole idea…

You may be astonished by the colors your paints can produce !

How does a watercolor color chart work ?

A watercolor chart is a grid of colored squares using all or some of the paints in your palette. The grid is labeled on the top and side axis with the names of all your paints. Each square in the chart is at the intersection of a row and a column of the chart.

You fill in each of the colored squares on your grid by mixing the color on the side axis with the color on the top axis.

For example in the diagram Row 4 + Column F = 4F ​

The completed grid gives you an overview of the mixing range of your palette colors.

6 good reasons to make a watercolor mixing chart  

1. ​I always recommend using single pigment and transparent watercolor paints. Why ? Because if you mix too many pigments it often ends up as a muddy dull color. I’m sure, like me, you prefer bright vivid colors in your paintings. Mixing single pigments is less inclined to produce flat colors. A color chart will help you identify which single pigments produce a desired color mix, and you may find some 2 or 3 pigment paints which mix badly !
2. Knowing how to mix blacks or grays with just two colors is extremely useful, (if you have a tube of black paint you’ll probably find don’t need it). A mixing chart will help you find which two colors mix beautifully to produce interesting grays and blacks.
3. ​Sometimes you also need to reduce the intensity of a color (paint that comes directly from the tube is at its brightest most intense hue). A lot of artists will be tempted to do this by adding black, but black will deaden your colors ! It’s much better to add a complementary hue, and your color chart will help you identify the right combination.
4. ​Mixing greens can also be quite tricky. When we go to mix paints we find it difficult to pick the right combination to get the right shade of green. A color chart goes a long way to helping with this.
5. Pinks and skin tones can be particularly frustrating to mix. A lot of beginners will mix red with white paint. The results are similar to when you try to mix a color by adding black. Your colors will look flat and uninspiring. There are several combinations that will produce great flesh tones and your mixing chart will help you discover them.
6. ​Do you really need all those tubes of brown, indigo and violet ? Convenience mixtures like these are useful if you need a very specific color all the time, but you can probably mix these colors with your existing palette of paints. Making your own color chart could save you money because you’ll know how to mix a color using two other paints. You may find that you end up using less colors.This is especially useful to know if you intend to paint while traveling, so you can make your own small travel palette.

​Even if you have a limited palette you’ll probably find some pleasantly surprising mixing results along the way. 

And in the end a good chart will make your life easier.

I’ve used 8 colors for this example mixing chart but you can use more or less. You can use any combination of colors you want to test. Quite often if you get a new palette set from a particular manufacturer, it’s a good way to test the mixing capabilities of your new paints.

So sit back, grab a coffee and have some fun !

My watercolor mixing chart – download the pdf

I like to do things the easy way.

But at the same time I kind of like things to look neat !

Most artists will ask you to grab a ruler and measure a grid of squares. If you don’t want to go to all the trouble of measuring, I have a quick and easy solution for you. Download my printable watercolor chart template

Try sticking a sheet of watercolor paper in your printer and print out the template, (thin 190 gsm paper may work best). Or you can trace the template onto watercolor paper using a lightbox or against a window, (this is what I do).

Psst… Sometimes you don’t even need to draw a neat grid ! Just sketch a few lines in your sketchbook.

My own color chart was designed for 8 colors, which are taken from my recommended limited color palette. ​

​How to make a watercolor mixing chart

1. Prepare your materials

Obviously you’re going to need paper, and a brush. I used a round brush size 8, and a sheet of hot pressed 300 gsm watercolor paper for my color chart. You will also need:

• ​All your paints
• ​A pencil
• ​2 jars of water
• ​Paper towels or a rag.

2. Setting up the color chart.

First of all count your paints.

The number of paints = the number of squares along each side of the chart.

For example, this chart includes 8 colors giving a total of 64 squares. I like to leave a gap between the squares, otherwise you have to wait for the paint to dry before painting adjacent boxes.

You can either sketch or draw your chart with a pencil and ruler or download my ready to go template.

3. Plan the order of your colors

I like to arrange my colors according to the hues of the color spectrum. I find it produces the most harmonious results. The order goes something like this:

Reds / oranges / yellows / greens / blues / violets / dark colors

Dark colors include paints such as Burnt Umber or Paynes Gray. Any earth colors like Raw Sienna or Yellow Ochre and pinks like Quinacridone Rose are located between the reds and yellows.

I used the following Daniel Smith paints for this chart:

Quinacridone Rose / Pyrrol Scarlet / Raw Sienna / New Gamboge / Lemon Yellow Phthalo Green (BS) / ​Phthalo Blue (GS) / French Ultramarine

​​For more details on choosing paint take a look at my recommended colors

4. Label your chart

Write the names of all your paints along the axis at the top and sides of the grid. Label them in the same order for each axis:

Left to right for the top axis – top to bottom for the side axis.

Note that the “name” of a paint is only a marketing name used by the paint brand. For this reason I like to include the specific pigments used in each paint for a better understanding of my palette.

If you’re testing one specific brand of paint you can make a note in the top left corner like I did. I’m using a waterproof pen to avoid bleeding or smudging the text.

5. Color the labels

Start by filling the labeled top and side rows with a dot of unmixed paint. This gives you a visual reference of the color appearance of your unmixed paints. It also helps associate the name of each paint with it’s color appearance.

6. The diagonal

The next step is to paint the base colors along the diagonal (this means the unmixed colors from your palette)

Follow the color from the X axis down to where it intersects with the same color across from the Y axis. For example, this is the square where Quinacridone Rose meets Quinacridone Rose or New Gamboge meets New Gamboge, etc.

Now if you look closely at your labels, you’ll realize that each “two color mix” is represented twice on the chart.

Quinacridone Rose + New Gamboge

is the same thing as

New Gamboge + Quinacridone Rose

This is why artists traditionally paint the two halves of the diagonal with a different strength of paint. I’ve put a full strength mix in the top right diagonal, and a watered down neutral mix in the ​bottom left diagonal.

This gives you a visual reference of how the paints appear at different values.

7. Which color mix in each square ?

Now it’s time to start filling in the squares. Each square represents the mixture of two colors. Each mixture should be an equal ratio of two paints (a 50/50 % ratio).

Locate the paint your using on the X axis at the top. Then run your finger down until it intersects with the paint your using on the Y axis. These are the two paints to mix for that square.

Mix your first two paints starting in the top left corner of the chart. The most logical way I have found to proceed, is to paint the fully saturated mixture first, then add some water and paint the lighter value on the opposite side of the diagonal.

Proceed row by row and column by column. For example I chose to work on the Quinacridone Rose row first. I mixed all of the two color combinations until I reached the end of the row. At the same time, I watered down each mixture and painted the corresponding column, until I reached the bottom of the that column. Then I moved on to the next row labelled Pyrrol Scarlet. I’m right-handed, so I find this method best to avoid smudging the painted boxes.

Now keep going !

Relax and have fun. Enjoy the beautiful colors you’re creating. This is a great exercise to build your color mixing confidence.

Here’s the final watercolor mixing chart that I produced for this exercise:

Would you like to learn all about color mixing? Give my new course a try:

The post How to make a watercolor mixing chart step by step first appeared on Watercolor Affair.

In my early days as a budding ​artist, I would dive right into a project and rely on intuition and a bit of luck to mix my colors. My art instructor would tell me “learn color mixing before you learn how to paint”.

Did I listen ? Nope !

The results were not always very gratifying !

I would sometimes mix three or four different pigments to get the color I was hoping for. As many of you have probably discovered, when you mix too many watercolor paints the resulting colors can look faded and dull !

So I eventually learned how to make a ​watercolor color wheel.

A watercolor color wheel is an important first step towards understanding ​mixing.

I would encourage every watercolorist to make their own versions. Not only for the sheer pleasure of it, but also because they are a very useful guide to color mixing.

If you search the internet you will find a multitude of watercolor color wheels, each with their own slight variations. However, none of them seem to give a full and satisfying explanation of how to make a watercolor wheel, or explain its importance, and the purpose of color wheels in art.

Making color wheels is a lot of fun, but what’s the point ? It’s worth taking a few minutes to understand why you’re making the color wheel in the first place.

All is revealed below !

If you just want to get going and make your own color wheel you can jump immediately to the step by step instructions below. 

The anatomy of the watercolor color wheel – Why 12 colors? 

To get started, a little bit of color terminology is going to be useful. You’ll hear artists talk about these terms and ideas repeatedly, so getting to know the vocabulary is a good idea.

The foundation of the traditional painter’s color wheel is the primary color triad: 

• ​yellow
• ​red 
• ​blue

​These are located at equal distances around the wheel with yellow at the top.

The primary colors cannot be mixed from any other combination of colors and are a vital addition to your watercolor palette.

Secondary colors are achieved by mixing one primary color with another in equal amounts. For example 50% yellow and 50% red = orange. There are 3 secondary colors on the color wheel, located at equal distances from each other, and the primary colors.

• ​orange
• ​purple
• ​green

​Tertiary colors are created by mixing a primary color with an adjacent secondary color. So for example yellow mixed with orange = yellow-orange. There are a total of 6 tertiary colors on the color wheel, all located in the gaps between the primary and secondary colors. The naming convention for tertiary colors always begins with the primary color name + the secondary color name:

• ​Yellow-orange
• ​Red-orange
• ​Red-purple
• ​Blue-purple
• ​Blue-green
• ​Yellow-green

​3 primary colors + 3 secondary colors + 6 tertiary colors = a 12 color wheel

Understanding what colors you can invent with a basic color wheel gives you the know-how for creating various color relationships.

For example, colors that are directly opposite each other on the color wheel are known as complementary colors. When you place these colors side by side in a painting they create the strongest amount of contrast. Two complementary colors will enhance each other and produce vibrant and exciting results. See below for a few examples.

Colors that sit side by side to each other on the color wheel create a color harmony known as analogous colors. These color hues are very close and together they create smooth and calming combinations.

You can continue to build interesting color relationships using the color wheel. Triadic colors for example are a set of 3 colors equally spaced around the color wheel (forming a triangle). They tend to create a dynamic and vibrant color harmony.

What is the purpose of the color wheel ?

These color wheels keep cropping up everywhere… Right? So you’re probably wondering why the color wheel is so essential to artists?

A color wheel is a fundamental tool for mixing colors, and it’s a way to anticipate the results of mixing watercolor pigments together.

​The color wheel will teach you how to make secondary and tertiary colors quickly, and help you expand you mixing range by quickly identifying complementary colors. Let me explain…

How to use a color wheel to mix colors ?

Let’s take an example. Use the color wheel to identify pairs of complementary colors opposite each other on the wheel.  When you mix pairs of complementary colors, quite amazingly you obtain a variety of different hues of browns!

You can do this by combining a primary plus a secondary color (e.g. yellow plus purple) or pairs of tertiary colors (e.g. yellow-orange plus blue purple). So long as the color hues are opposite each other on the wheel.

In theory you can mix any hue you need with three primary colors. Painting with a limited color palette like this helps create harmony in your paintings. It means you have to work a bit harder to mix your colors, but you will learn so much about color mixing and your confidence in mixing colors will grow!

Try mixing different color combinations with your paints to find your favorites!

let the color wheel help you choose the paints that you mix and the approximate paint proportions you need … then rely on your eye to get the right mixture.

I like to use a sketchbook and keep notes of the paint names and pigments I use. Like this I can build up a handy reference guide for mixing watercolors.

How to make a 12 color watercolor wheel – step by step

You’ll be amazed at the variety of colors you can obtain simply by making color wheels with different combinations of primary colors. Color wheels are especially useful if you employ your own personal collection of paints. You can experience for yourself the range of colors you can mix and use the wheels as a rough guide for future color mixing.

Supplies used :

• ​Tubes of Paints: New Gamboge, Pyrrol Scarlet, French Ultramarine
• ​A round plate to use as a palette
• ​Round brush size 8
• ​Two jars of water
• ​A sheet of test paper
• ​watercolor paper 300 gms / 140 lb
• ​2B pencil
• ​A ruler, a protractor and CD (or use my template opposite)

​

​By convention yellow is always placed at the top of the wheel. After that, you’ll find that red and blue are inconsistently placed on either side of the wheel. I choose to place red on the right for my color tests.

Refer to the image below or print my template to use as a guide.

1. ​Draw the layout of your color circle onto some watercolor paper with a pencil. A lot of people use a CD as a template. You can use a CD, a protractor and a ruler or If you prefer you can download my own template ​and trace it onto paper (I just use the good old fashioned method of holding the sheets against a window to trace – I find this is quicker and easier than measuring everything ).
2. ​Find a big round plate to use as a mixing palette. I like this method because you can arrange your paint puddles around the circular plate in the same locations as your color wheel. (elaborate)
3. Start by painting the 3 primary colors. Try to keep the tone of each color the same. Don’t forget to clean your brush thoroughly when you move on to the next color. Use the positions P1, P2 and P3 indicated on my template.
4. Next mix and paint the secondary colors in positions S1, S2 and S3. Make sure to mix a big enough puddle of secondary colors and reserve some for the next stage.
5. Lastly mix the tertiary colors and place them in positions T1, T2, T3, T4, T5 and T6.
6. Position C0 at the center of the color wheel ​mixes the three primary colors in equal parts yellow, red and blue. This is the theoretical “black” but which usually results in a brown or grey color depending on the pigments in your paints.

The resulting color locations should be as follows:

• ​P1 = Yellow
• ​P2 = Red
• ​P3 = Blue
• ​S1 = Orange
• ​S2 = Purple
• ​S3 = Green
• ​T1 = Yellow-orange
• ​T2 = Red-orange
• ​T3 = Red-purple
• ​T4 = Blue-purple
• ​T5 = Blue-green
• ​T6 = Yellow-green
• ​​C0 = “Black”

​Congratulations!

You’ve just completed a fabulous 12 color watercolor wheel…

My color wheel was created using what are considered to be warm hues. You can try repeating the process and create a color wheel using cool hues. You’ll find that the results are completely different!

You might be wondering what warm and cool hues are ? For example cool blues are those that have a green bias. Warm blues have a red bias. Cool reds have a purple bias and warm reds have an orange bias. You can use the color wheel to judge the cool or warm tendency of a color.

My suggested paints for cool hues would be:

• ​Lemon Yellow
• ​Quinacridone Rose
• ​Phthalo Blue (GS)

​You can even try mixing a blend of warm and cool hues for yet another set of results!

Maybe try:

• ​New Gamboge
• ​Quinacridone Rose
• ​French Ultramarine

​You’ll have the most success using artists quality paints. I’m using Daniel Smith but you can find excellent alternatives from Winsor & Newton or M Graham for example. If you want to play around with this same mixture of warm and cool primary colors, Daniel Smith offer a sample pack of small tubes which are ideal.

​Now it’s your turn ! ​Have ​fun painting some gorgeous color wheels !

And to learn everything you need to know about color mixing – check out my new course:

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