Mixing Watercolors – A Combination of Science and Art

One of the most important aspects in watercolor painting is your sense of color. With luck, you have an inborn talent of discerning colors. But most of us don’t have that innate gift. The good news is that we can learn to mix colors from scratch. And eventually, as we study and master our craft, the colors that flow from the brush will become almost instinctive…

In watercolor painting, mixing colors is a challenge. A wrong shade here or there can make all the difference between a practice run and a work of art. Of course, it may take a long time to master such a simple thing as color. Happily again, part of the joy of art and painting is the learning of what workss.

The Basics

The basic colors are red, yellow and blue and the secondary colors are green, orange and purple.

In basic art classes, we are also taught that reds, oranges and yellow are named warm colors. Greens, blues and purples are cool colors.

Mixing

One of the first lessons in mixing colors is this — the most intense (and the purest) color come from combining two primary colors that lean toward the same secondary color. On the other hand, the more colors you mix together, the less pure your mixtures will become.

The difficulty in mixing watercolor paints comes from the absence of a “color neutral” tube color for each of the primary colors: red, yellow and blue. Some claim they have them, but these are colors that are just close and that most of them have a color bias or they lean towards some other color.

Combinations

Mixing colors need not be very complicated, if you think on as well as imagine first on the color you want to produce. If, for instance, you want pure vibrant purple, get it from a red and a blue that is biased towards purple.

A less intense purple can be had from the orange-biased red and a purple-biased ultramarine blue. For a dull purple, use the orange-biased red and the green-biased blue.

The same principle, more or less, governs colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (ex: red and green). When mixed together, these colors will simply neutralize each other, producing only grayish, brownish color.

(One technique: To produce the color you want, use no more than three colors. Begin with the lightest one; add the darker one little by little until you get the shade you want.)

Neutralization

Mixing more than two pigments or mixing two pigments that are biased on two completely different colors will always result in “neutralized” mixtures. (“Neutralized” here means less intense or less pure.)

However, these less intense mixtures can be wonderful colors, too, and you need to know how to mix them to play them off against brighter, purer colors.

The science and the art

Another forgotten fact is that mixing colors is a matter of proportion. How much of each one goes into the mix determines the color shade of that mix. However, never over-mix your pigments.

One last word about mixing watercolors – your watercolor looks different on paper and on the palette. Spend some time dashing paint on the paper until you know what the actual look is going to be.

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