Watercolour Mixing Chart + Color Mixing Tips
I recently released my professional watercolour palette in partnership with Winsor & Newton. This palette includes six colors I LOVE to suggest to my students because they mix so beautifully together and allow for various color options.
With that being said color mixing has been a topic of discussion lately so here are some of my color mixing tips and some tutorials to help you on your color mixing journey.
Color Mixing + Creating Your Color Wheel
Your primary colors; yellow, red, and blue, are how you can create vibrant color mixes. Mixing these primary colors will give you secondary colors such as orange, green, and violet/purple.
When you mix the primary colors with those secondary colors, you will create three new colors that are called tertiary colors.
When displayed together, it creates our basic color wheel of 12 colors!
Creating Harmony with Complimentary Colors
We can create balance and harmony in our paintings by following a few simple guidelines. This is how I start the process of deciding on a color theme or palette for a painting.
Color Harmony is created by choosing one color and adding to your palette the colors that are directly across from that color OR on either side of that color.
For example, if you choose to start your palette planning with yellow, you will see that pink is a complementary color because they are across from each other on the color wheel. Blue would also be a complimentary color because shades of blue are opposite on the color wheel.
NEW: Color Mixing Made Simple E-book (2nd Edition)
You’re getting a first look at the Color Mixing Made Simple E-book (2nd edition)! Inside I share with you things like; color theory, how to mix colors effectively, and I even share a few never-before-seen images from my personal sketchbooks (like this one!)
Color Mixing is one of my favorite ways to add harmony to any painting project, but understanding color theory makes it easy for you to paint interesting paintings that you love! The important thing to know is not to get overwhelmed with color mixing. Pick a few of your favorite paints and play around with them to understand how they work together. Once you become familiar with some of your favorite color mixes you’ll be able to understand how colors work together and can mix more easily from there.
More Color Mixing Tips + Tricks for Watercolour Artists
Looking for more tutorials on color mixing? Below are two of my own videos I’ve created on mixing the perfect watercolour paint consistency and 5 of my favorite watercolour paints to paint with.
