How to Match Any Color with Oil Paint

so I'm going to do a demonstration and show you guys how to mix any color in the world with oil paint using a simple palette and I've got three colors that I'm going to match and it's but it's the same workflow no matter what color in the world you're trying to mix you can use this very same workflow and it will always get you to the color and you can match any color in the world now before I start I've got another video called how to mix colors which is on drum mix paint calm and it's sort of it explains how to mix colors and context of doing a painting and it talks about color groups and making steps and some other things but I want to keep it real simple in this video and just show you just how easy it is to match any color with oil paint okay so let's start with this color that's a dirty reddish color and I'm going to match that color now if you look at the color wheel here I have yellow green blue purple red and orange okay disregard the brown and the white for now but those that is the direction that we can push the color in other words we can push it in the yellow direction the green direction the blue the purple the red or the orange direction we can also adjust the value meaning the lightness or the darkness okay you can have a very light lightish red or you can have a much darker blood-red and they can both be equally intense in red but the value is different value means the brightness or the lightness okay so take a look at this color wheel there's a couple ways that we can adjust the the lightness or the brightness okay so the first thing I just said is they're six questions yellow green blue purple red orange to adjust the color and now to adjust the value the brightness we have to a couple ways we can do that or actually four ways blue and brown will darken a color yellow and white will lighten the color okay so by using just these five colors yellow and this is cadmium yellow burn umber pyro Rubin which is a Geneva color but permanent alizarin crimson or alizarin crimson will work in its place white titanium white and french ultramarine blue now let's start the first thing that to understand is if you don't know what to do and you're using this workflow and especially if you're learning to mix colors for the first time or are unfamiliar with this workflow here what I would suggest is don't worry too much about trying to you know that it's always starting that really gets people they said well I don't even know where to begin well if you don't know where to begin and you're starting out and you have no instinct for color mixing just take a little bit of everything and mix it up in a pile and that's going to give you a starting point to begin this workflow and you're going to be able to eventually match any color in the world so let me show you just how easy this is alright so let's start off and I'm going to sort of you know if I was using all my experience I might grab a few colors and get pretty close to that but I'm going to intentionally just miss it by a mile and in the process be able to fix it and show you how we can get there okay so I just randomly took about equal amounts of every color just to give myself something and I and it was an equal amounts but what I mean is I didn't make any deliberate effort to try to mix this color even though I've gotten maybe closer than I wanted to but let's start there okay I've mixed up a random color I'm trying to mix this color here and first thing I'm going to do and this is the workflow again is I want to adjust the value I want to get my brightness and the lightness in range there's no point going crazy and worrying about the color until your values sort of close so if I compare these two it just so happens that the value is just about equal you can hardly tell the difference okay now I'm going to adjust this because I need to be able to explain things to you so I'm just going to add some black and black is blue and brown and you can make warm blacks by make and more bur number into your black and you can make cooler blacks by mixing more French ultramarine into your black but I basically just added brown and blue and there was no logic in that I'm just trying to tone this down so I can give you a better lesson all right so now our value is off so let's say that this was the first color that you miss mixed and it was way off so now I look at these two and obviously mine is a good bit darker than this color now so the first thing I'm going to have to deal with is lightening this color up and there's only two ways to do that and that's the beauty of only using five colors you don't have to you know overthink it it's not it's not as confusing when you have like five different ways that you can lighten the color there's only two ways yellow or white and conveniently they're on the opposite side of the color wheel so now as I lighten this up when I make a decision to lighten this up and this you don't have to do this you're still going to match the color but let's try to kind of push it in the direction of what we've got here so even though my value is wrong here you can see mine's a good bit darker let's let's compare the color and this isn't critical but just in general I would say mines this paint color here that I'm trying to match is slightly more in this sort of orangey direction so maybe it needs some more orange which is down here on the yellow side of the color wheel so I need to lighten this up and I'm going to lighten it up with yellow and I may need some white you know but I'm but I'm just going to use yellow because I can see that this is more orangey which has more yellow in it it's down here on on the color wheel so let's lighten it up with yellow now if I if you didn't know and you were confused and you added yellow and white you're still going to get there but I'm just going to lighten it up with just yellow and what I'm doing here and this is the workflow is I'm focusing on the value first I'm not going to go crazy worrying about the color until my value is the same and that's the important thing so now if we compare those two it's still a good bit too dark so let's lighten it up a lot and this is going to end up and pushing it way too yellow I know from experience but let's just do it anyway because maybe you don't know that so now we're as you can see it's really getting very yellow and that may not be the direction we want to go in but it's okay we're still going to get there all right so we're our objective is to lighten this up until the value matches that the lightness and brightness is about the same as this color so we're still getting it lighter but it needs to go even more but now let's just look at the color while we're doing this and we have to now decide do I want to lighten this even more with more yellow or with some white well at this point it's starting to look this looks more yellowish than this does and maybe this color looks more purplish and those are the six questions so I'm not worrying too much about the color now but I'm not going to add more yellow because this is already too yellow so I'll add some white to lighten it up and again our objective is to get this color to have the same value as this color and I'm kind of intentionally messing it up a little bit so I can explain alright so now we have lighten this color up a good bit now let's compare it now mine's too light so I've overshot and I made it to light so now I need to bring it back down and make it darker again I'm worrying about the value first and less about the color but now that we need to darken it down because I've made it too light what color do I need to add to it I only have two choices brown or blue okay red will also darken a color but we usually don't use it for that purpose so brown or blue is going to darken this down now what direction do I want to put it push it it's kind of a purpley reddish maybe more reddish color this is a little bit more not as red so I need to push it in the red direction so that's burn umber as you can see on the color wheel so I'm just going to add some burn umber my objective is to darken this color down and if your pile ever gets too big and and I do encourage you to mix you know plenty of but if your pile gets out of control go ahead and just remove some of it just put it aside and you can use it later but okay so we're trying to darken this down and let's see if how far we've got so now our value is about the same as you can see value is real close if it's hard to tell that's close enough so now let's now that we've got the value the same and that was the workflow that was step number one is concentrate on the value on the darkness and we've got a pretty good match on the value so now we're going to adjust the color and what is the difference between these two if I say which one is more red and there's six questions we can ask when we're adjusting the color which one is more red which one is more orange which one is more yellow which one is more green which one is more blue or which one is more purple and in this case if I say which one is more red it's obvious that this color that we're trying to mix is more red so we're simply going to add some red to the color now whenever you adjust add color sometimes you will adjust the value at the same time in other words by adding that red it might have darkened my colour down a little bit now I've just brought in some of this lighter colour so I might be okay but the point is is that whenever you add a color you always want to go back and make sure your values in check and if it isn't if it isn't right in other words if I've now messed but it is the same as you can see but if you do get your value off by adding other colors well you need to go back and focus on getting your value first before you try to judge the color that's the very important point that I want you to understand is focus on the value first okay so here we can see the value is very similar it's almost identical as far as I can tell but I would say if I say to you which one is more red I still think that our target color is still a little bit more red so we're just going to keep on and add a little more red to our color to push it further in the red direction and it's as simple as that and and you can always get there with these five colors and this simple color wheel will always get you there there are some colors that we can't mix with these five colors and those are you know extreme colors or very very bright bright colors and I'll talk about those later you need special tubes of color to mix those intense intense greens and in oranges and all the other intense colors that you can find but these colors will pretty much mix 99% of the colors that you see in the world around you and we'll deal with those power colors in a minute but let's go back so what have we done we added some more red now let's compare and now I'm asking myself which one is more red well they're getting real close but I've changed my value as you can see this color is very slightly darker very slight but we need to lighten this up a little bit now notice I would say that my color is maybe less purple than this color I think this color is very slightly more purplish although it's hard to say but I'm going to add just a little bit of white because White's over here on the purple side and that will kick my value back up so it's not darker and let's think about the color again still a little bit too dark and maybe slightly too not red enough so a little bit of red any bit of white and we should be about there I'm not going to go too crazy trying to match it perfectly but that's about it right there okay maybe the values are slightly off but good enough all right so now let's try another color okay so let's mix this gray color here now it may be obvious to many of you that this has a lot of white in it but Gray's there are two colors that are a little bit that might throw people and that is if you just and again let me go back and say that when I think about color I always recommend that my students think about color in these these three ways which is more yellow which is more red which is more blue and of course which is more purple which is more orange and which is more green and those are the six questions but if you look at a color and you say mine looks more grey that simply means mine looks more blue okay so just remember that if you're if you see grey and you say mine looks more grey or that looks more grey that simply means that's more blue the other one is brown if you look at a color and you and you can't tell what the difference is but yours looks more brown that simply means it's more reddish orange okay so those are two that things that when you know people will look at a grey and they're not they don't think that they're looking at blue but when you see grey that's blue and when you see a real brownish color that's like a dirty Orange alright so there is grey which is sort of a blue and if I start and I say okay here's blue and again we're going to focus on value first and let's just overshoot so if that's sort of a bluish color let's go ahead and make a really strong bluish color that's about the same value okay so which one is darker mine's maybe slightly darker mine is clearly too blue so this is a helpful thing to know if you're ever trying to mix a color it always is overshoot at first you know you can still and when I say overshoot it I mean I'm making it even stronger than it needs to be so if I'm mixing a dirty orange mix a pure orange and then dirty it down by adding a little bit of blue which is the opposite orange so let me show you what I mean so this is clearly of stronger blue than this gray here and again gray means blue and mine is clearly to blue so the opposite of blue is orange so I'll take a little bit of yellow and a little bit of red and it's going to tone that blue right down because it's the opposite of art of orange is the opposite of blue and I've just put yellow and red in it which is orange okay so you can see that the blue is now less intense and my color is too dark should be focusing on my value first here should have added some white with that yellow and red although the yellow might have lightened it up a little bit but focusing on value first thinking about color as I decide what to adjust but if you're wrong and you add the wrong color you're still going to get there and that's the important point so you can do this exercise even if you don't have a clue what you're doing you can just go through the workflow and mix any color in the world so now the value is getting real close but as you can see - - blue so this is less blue and so we'll add a little bit of yellow again adding orange which is the opposite of blue a little bit of red and that's going to take that blue out of the color and tone it down some more okay so now mine is too blue it's too dark so let's adjust the value first because that's our number one priority so I'm adding white which I'm going to need some yellow - it's already to blue but I've got to keep it in the grave in the Grays which is blue and white all right so now and I'm not mixing enough color I should have a bigger pile than that but just for this demonstration so this is two purple and I need to add some more purple to my color so I will add some red and some blue and that's certainly going to dark it down and mine's already a little bit too dark so I'm going to have to add some white to the reason I'm using white instead of yellow is because white is over here on the purple side simple as that so I've just added some red probably way too much and now we can see that - way too purple and so the opposite of purple is yellow so now we're going to go back in the other direction and I'm just showing you how even if you don't know what you're doing you can still get there so now let's see what we've got now mine is - still - purple or - reddish purple maybe mine looks too obviously too red so the opposite of red is green so let's add some yellow some blue but really primarily yellow because it's kind of purply and the yellow is going to get rid of that purple okay so now let's see what we've got okay so now if you're confused what do I do now this is the perfect time to do the six questions which one is more read I would say mine is slightly more read let's keep going which one is more orange I would say mine is more orange than this one is less orange so if mine is more orangey reddish well the opposite of orangey reddish is bluish purple so blue or rather orangey red I'm sorry doing that wrong orangey red is right here opposite of that is bluish green so blue so yellow a little bit of yellow or rather blue and a little bit of yellow so blue and a little bit of yellow all right let's see where we are now which one is darker we've got to keep our value in check this - too dark and this is more grayish which is means blue mine is still too orange so we're going to add blue and we're going to add white to keep our value in check because mine is too dark so this going through this workflow it might seem tedious at first but the more you do this this will teach you to mix colors and if I wanted to mix this color and I wasn't doing a demonstration I could probably mix it in just you know two or three little tries just boom boom boom in a minute and a half and I'm you know going round and round here to kind of show you the rules and show you how you can always get there but now let's look at it again how do these colors compare first of all mine is too light so I need to darken the value down and know how do I darken that value down I can add blue or brown or both in this case if I compare colors and I'm running out of room here to compare the color if I compare the color mine is too light so I need to darken it down do I want to darken it with blue or brown - out which direction do I want to push the color maybe slightly bluish but it's probably going to need both otherwise it's going to get too blue so I'll add a little bit of brown but if you didn't know to add Brown you'd eventually get there because you would have made it too blue and then you would have realized that you had to add orange which is where Brown is on the color wheel ok so no matter how long this takes if you just keep bumping and bumping and bumping thinking about value first so now my values in check because I added that blue to it now we're getting real close and I can say which one is more blue mine is very slightly more blue so I will add just a touch of orange to it and this is where I got to be careful because now I'm getting real close so that little bit of orange we'll bring that blue down even more and we should be just about there real close maybe a slight bit more I would say maybe this one is slightest bit more per police it's very hint or less less blue so maybe even a teeny bit more yellow and a teeny bit more red which is orange which is the opposite of blue and that will bring my colour just about in line I believe close enough maybe slightly more and now you got off just a little bit just a hint of white probably went overboard there and I think that's close enough all right let's do one more all right so now we have this green color here which is a little different and we're just going to go through the same workflow so first try to mix any color maybe try to overshoot it meaning let's try to mix a really strong green since this is sort of a greenish color and we'll mix a green that's perhaps even stronger than that and now let's compare so first of all the value mines too dark so I need to lighten it up let's just keep lighting it up with yellow and now if I compare the value mine is too bright so we'll darken it back down with blue we're just going to stay in the greens and I can tell it mine's too strong of a green but we're just going to keep going here and stay without I'm not adding any red at this point even though I know that mine's too green because I first want to kind of get my value close well it's obvious that my greens a little strong so the opposite of green is red and if I add red to it it's going to instantly darken this down and kill the green and now and this is a good example to show you we're going to focus on value first so even though I'm adjusting this color my priority is the value so now if I look at it - too dark and we've already decided that this is too green it's still too green so instead of adding yellow which is over here on the green side I'm going to add white which is going to push it toward the purple or more so instead of adding yellow which would only increase the green this time I'm going to add some white to help my value so I'm trying to get my value in check and I'm kind of overshooting this because I want to demonstrate something but so this is now I've tried to lighten my color and now I've made it to light so I need to darken it down again so I asked myself which one is more green okay because we're thinking about value first but if I want to darken it down what should I use and the strength of the green is actually similar it's just a value problem so let's just start by adding some blue and stay over here on the green side because I don't want to kill my green any more okay so in other words I could have added brown to darken it darken with blue or brown I could have added brown but that would have pushed it in the red direction and I want to keep the intensity of my green so I instead I use blue to darken it down and we're just going to go back and forth like this this will be too dark but I'm going to instead of worrying about the color first I really got to get my value in check and so that's real close but maybe slightly too dark and also minus a little too strong of a green so I will add white to lighten it up because I don't want to increase the green anymore if anything mine looks too yellow perhaps well it's hard to say but let's just kick our value up with some white to see what we've got it's going to go back and forth here so now my value is very slightly too light so now how do I want to darken that down if I look at my color maybe mine's slightly stronger but let's just darken it down with blue because a little bit of red in that brown is just going to kill this green instantly and I really am just trying to adjust my value so I'm just going to add some blue because you're always kind of overshooting you know it's a lot easier to dirty up a color than it is to make it more pure so I'm always overshooting and making my color more intense than it needs to be like in this case you can see that my green is a little too Bluegreen so what is the opposite of Bluegreen now we can add some brown but brown will darken it so let's just add a little bit of yellow in a little bit of red just to take the edge off of that green and I'm adding orange because it's a Bluegreen Bluegreen is over here there's Bluegreen and so reddish orange which means more yellow than red so you just anytime you want to adjust a color just look at that color wheel and go to the exact opposite side that means Bluegreen opposite of blue green is reddish orange the opposite of reddish purple is greenish yellow okay so just follow the logic my color look to blue green I needed to get rid of the blue green so I'm adding reddish yellow a reddish orange rather which is right here meaning more red than yellow and those rules will just become so second nature the more you use this system and it keeps things real simple okay so now our color is getting real close mind still a little too Bluegreen and I don't and it's perhaps slightly too dark so a little bit of white and a teeny bit more red and a little bit of yellow just a little bit because we're reddish orange and slightly too dark so let's lighten it up do I want to increase the intensity of the green wouldn't hurt so maybe a little yellow but a little white too because I don't want to get too yellowy and that's close enough we could make it slightly more green but you get the idea anyway I hope that's helpful that is those are that is the workflow that will always get you to a color now there's some other colors that are beyond the reach of these five colors meaning a real intense green like a turquoise green or a brilliant scarlet red you know some of these colors that you can go by specialty tubes for and get these real intense colors that you rarely see in the natural world except in a traffic cone or a stained-glass window or you know that there's certainly some times when nature does present those intense colors but even the colors of almost all flowers you can mix with these colors there are exceptions there are some intense purples and intense you know the oranges perhaps that you can't quite get and you need to go buy a special tube for but what I do and I highly encourage you to to do the same is that I use these five colors which gives me a real simple way to mix in it to match any color that I see if the colors beyond let's say I'm trying to mix some intense blue green turquoise green and what I try to do and this is the important part is try to mix the colors best I can with these colors and these colors have fantastic working properties they're not overly intense they're not you know phthalo blue is really hard to work with for instance so therefore if I'm mixing a Bluegreen I'm going to first clean my brush so it has no red in it no burn umber and no red because those are the opposite of green I'm going to clean my brush with some green paint meaning blue yellow and maybe some white usually some white if it's a Bluegreen it certainly has white in it but I'm going to clean my brush in that blue green paint then I'm going to clean my area on my palette and I'm only going to use white blue and yellow with zero burr number zero burr number zero red in it and that's going to give me the strongest blue-green you know some balance of those three colors is going to give me the strongest blue-green that I can make and then if I want to boost it beyond that I get some phthalo blue or something intense turquoise color and I add just a little bit of that to what I've already got to boost it up to the color that I want and that way you're using as little of those power colors which have you know don't don't have the same handling properties or the pigment strength is something that's hard to manage and you want to use as little of those as possible so first attempt to mix the color with these five and then boost that color up as opposed to say getting a dirty green and then having to add a whole bunch of phthalo blue to overpower the reds and the Browns in there so I hope that's that and that goes for you know mixing an orange or anything you know first try to mix you know if you're trying to mix in a real intense orange attempt to mix it with a clean brush and only red and only yellow mix those two together and then if you need to kick it beyond that go get some cadmium scarlet or whatever and boost your color like that but that's how you mix colors and that workflow will always get you there using this very simple color wheel if you go to draw mix paint comm you can find links to all my free videos if you go to Geneva fine art comm you can find out all about the paint that I use to paint with that I manufacture myself right here in Austin Texas and thank you so much for watching you

Channel: Draw Mix Paint

Views: 1,643,056

Rating: 4.9349499 out of 5

Keywords: mark carder, carder method, oil painting techniques, realism, fine art, learn to paint, how to paint, brushwork, artist, geneva, geneva fine art, geneva fine art supplies, geneva paint, color mixing, limited palette, alla prima, sargent, paint, painting, paintings, painting demo, mix paint, mix color, mix pigment, mixing color, mixing paint, mixing pigment, color theory, color wheel, color paint, color painting, oil paint, pigment

Id: TNB3XY67Q-I

Length: 33min 37sec (2017 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 05 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/NoZellin]

I love Mark Gardner's take on color theory application for oil painting!

[u/oleooreo]

It was so so helpful for me. I've struggled with value for a long time and this totally put it into perspective!

[u/jaybrams15]

This was great. Thanks

[u/Staghorn_Burlbeard]

One of the greatest oil painting teachers on Youtube. Follow his method and you're guaranteed some success

[u/elissa77]

Great share, thanks.