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Mixing colors was always a threat to me when I first started painting decades ago. I’m all self-taught, so it took a lot of studying and experimenting along the way to get to where I am today.

As I’ve grown in experience, I have discovered that there are some very basic rules about mixing colors that can guide you in coming up with the colors you want. The most exciting part of it, is that you don’t have to buy a lot of individual, pre-mixed colors to achieve what you want. I must admit, that there are certain colors I do buy which I really could mix myself, but it makes life a lot easier having them.

I was surprised the other day when I looked at the search terms being used to find my website and other social networking articles I have written on mixing colors. the most surprising search was the number of people who asked “how do you make red.” Ready for the answer? Let’s start by taking a look at Primary Colors.

Mixing Primary Colors

There are three Primary Colors.

• RED
• BLUE
• YELLOW

They are called Primary Colors, because they cannot be made from any other combination of colors or pigments. Thus you cannot make red by mixing other colors. You must use red pigments from varying sources.

I live in Tucson, AZ, part of the year and am familiar with the work of Ted DeGrazia. He crushed the insects (or what ever they are) that form a white cottony substance on some the cactus plants to get the vibrant reds he used in his paintings.

When you mix any two of the Primary Colors, you get Secondary Colors.

Mixing Secondary Colors

• When you mix red and blue in equal parts, you get a deep violet or purple.
• When you mix blue and yellow in equal parts, you get green
• When you mix yellow and red in equal parts, you get orange

Mix all of these together, and you will get black or very muddy browns(something you usually want to avoid).

You can also mix the primary colors unequally.

This is how you get varying shades of blue-green, yellow-green, red-orange, yellow-orange, blue-violet and red-violet.

Now, if you take a look at everything I have just told you, you will see that I started with three colors, red, blue and yellow. I have turned those into a minimum of nine more colors, plus black and muddy brown. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Ok, now it is time to talk about Complementary Colors, and their role in all of this. It would really help if you had a color wheel to look at, so you could visualize this better. I have a lot of visual examples on my website which you can link to below when you are finished reading this article.

Mixing Complementary Colors

Complementary colors are any two colors that are directly opposite from each other on a color wheel.

If you were to look at a color wheel, this is what you would see:

• Blue and Orange are opposites
• Red and Green are opposites
• Yellow and Purple are opposites
• Blue-green and Red-Orange are opposites
• Blue-violet and Yellow-Orange are opposites
• Yellow-green and Red-Violet are opposites

Mixing any of the complementary colors together will either gray the dominant color down making it appear darker, increasing its value, or produce varying forms of brown.

Adding white to any of these mixtures will decrease its value.

I hope that I have given you some encouragement to try to mix colors yourself. It is really rewarding when you are all finished to realize that you created something that is truly your own. I came across two quotes that I just love and want to share with you.

“Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what is already there.” Bernice Fitz-Gibson

“In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.” James Russell Lowell