How To Mix Color | A Beginners Guide

all right mixing colors can be very difficult but in this video I'm gonna give you some key tips that will make it much much easier hi I've opened up a coach I'm Chris for nat arrow here to help simplify old paint so you can get better faster all right color mixing not much I can just talk about so I'm just gonna go straight to the video and explain how I mix colors it's person up I'm going to skip a brief overview of the color wheel because we don't understand that you're not gonna build to get very far I'm keeping this very simple I'm only I'm only gonna be using them ultramarine blue caddy and red and lemon yellow and titanium white got some other colors here just don't pay attention to those those were just left over on my palette here so first off it's gonna do the old color wheel here so you got blue on one side you got red it's gonna create a little triangle here and I highly recommend using just these three colors and white because especially when you're starting out because it will force you to have a better understanding of color a good foundation if you really understand these basic colors also will save you money you'll have to buy a bunch of colors and from my experience it had it helps you a lot build a good instinct for color if you're constantly just reaching for colors out of the tube it's you just kid not gonna really strengthen that color mixing muscle and it will get to a point where it will just be completely instinctual it really won't be thinking about what colors you're mixing together you list know which colors to go to alright so I've got these and so when you mix colors that are opposite each other you're gonna get intermediary color so you got whoops so I got my blue here so I'm gonna do blue and some yellow that's gonna get you a green let's see if I mix blue and red it's gonna get you a purple and this is gonna be good for really dark you notice I don't ever use black if you ever have stuff that's really really dark like almost black like the really really dark subtrees anything that's really dark I I always start out by mixing this deep deep purple like this that's good for darks if you want actually a lighter purple if you're doing mounds or something a lot of times with purple you have to lighten it up with white you see the Purple's a lot more visible now at the white and then lastly going to do red and yellow to get an orange now I got an orange and you can keep mixing colors you can mix you know these get like a lime green here and you know just keeps going and going but to understand these basics will really help you out a lot with knowing what to do and the thing with the color wheel the biggest thing it helps you with I find is complimentary colors which are colors that are opposite so you got like red and green or opposite so if you had some green see if you had some trees and you mixed up this green like this green right here is way too vibrant it's not a natural green you're not gonna see this green in trees or anything like that needs to be neutralized so you could add some red to neutralize it so I'll show you real quick over here so you just got this basic almost out of the tube green and you want to make it look more natural you're gonna add touch of red now you're getting more of a natural almost like a green of leaves grass stuff like that you can see next to that it's just more natural green because we neutralized it with its complement which is red same thing goes for all the other colors if you have blue problem it is orange over here safe yeah blue right here it's like wow that's way too much take a little bit of orange which is a little bit yellow a little bit of red now that blue is not so vibra it's more of a natural blue god this goes really well with skin tones because with skin tones I kind of always you know I think of skin tones it's it's kind of a peachy orange a fleshy tone it's always kind of start with an orange and I'll work them away from there a little bit of white you'd think that would be a good skin tone right there looks nice and flush tawny next to that but it's way too vibrant you wouldn't need to knock it down a little bit of blue so I think a little bit of blue here there we go now it's looking a little more natural it's not so vibrant go back touch of red now you're working with it good skin tone right there so just knowing these basics just helps so much it allows you to mix any color from these basic colors and gives you a really good solid understanding of how color works so if you get this down and it becomes second nature you're really gonna just fly through color mixing and not even think about it which is I think it's the best way to go he's a way to remember when you're painting what the complement colors are a lot of times you've seen these colors put together in real life like a lot of times like any sports teams will use complement colors like the Minnesota Vikings purple and yellow Lakers purple and yellow there's a reason they do that it looks aesthetically pleasing when you put them together yeah the Christmas colors red and green you got blue and orange it's like Syracuse Florida Gators you see blue and orange put together a lot those are things to help you remember what the compliments are so that way when you're when you're painting and you're you you'll think in terms of like this needs more yellow or this needs to be more blue this needs to be more red I find that's a lot easier and simpler to think about instead of this need to be warmer or cooler darker lighter like those can be kind of vague and not really that helpful when you're thinking about it but just thinking all this needs to be more blue this needs to be more red this means we're yellow you can be able to push your colors in those directions alright next I'm going to talk about this mixing colors like physically on your palate like the physical process of setting up your palate and mixing your colors and having your colors somewhat organized on your palate and first off the way I like I lay out my colors I didn't really ever think about it for the longest time but about warm up above colors I just kind of put them anywhere but this really helps a lot keeps you organized now guys kind of go from cool colors to warm colors I got my ultramarine blue caddy and red lemon yellow and titanium white I'll put colors and between sometimes I got a cerulean blue I'll put some SAP green some crimson yellow ochre this just kind of as I'm mixing colors it keeps them in the kind of like the right order like value-wise color temperature wise even though a lot of times when I work I end up my palette ends up being very mixed there's no real order and some artists really don't like that they get lost in it and it they it hurts them in terms of knowing where they're at a for me I haven't really found it that much and I feel like it helps me add a lot of harmony my colors in the painting because I kind of mix all my colors from a previous color that I mixed so every color has a little bit of another color in it that's already in the painting which for me I find that helpful to harmonize the colors of my painting bumps gonna kind of show you how I would mix colors on a painting I let's kind of start with a the flesh tone here like say if you're doing a portrait I'm still use the primaries here so I was gonna take these and let's say I'm gonna start I always work dark to light too so let's just say the darks of the face actually be kind of more of a purple here so I think they're really really dark shadows in the face they've got this purple neutrons is this a bit with the yellow this is gonna be like the darkest darks in the shadows it really darks go right there and then it's gonna kind of branch this out and a lot of times I'll take the color that I'm using and just kind of starting to pile here and say I want this to be a little lighter of a flesh tone because if one eye can see it next to my dark so I can see its comparison right here on the palate which is very helpful it's now got like a little bit of a lighter color and I'll just keep branching this off into whatever colors I need I know I don't have a reference right now for like skin tones I'm looking at I'm just kind of guessing here but it's got like a little bit of a lighter skin tone here maybe got the highlight highlights in the face sometimes you'll have certain areas that are like in-between so it kind of takes some of this a little bit of that and you know just keep branching out from there another thing is make sure to don't worry about wasting paint I know it's sucks and you pay money for this paint and you don't want to waste it that's just really that's just part of the process I was told that very very early on don't worry about wasting paint so make sure like when you're mixing because mix up a good amount like if you don't mix up enough and you run out it's fine don't worry about like matching the cut light you know like I'm not gonna be able match the color or exactly like you will you'll be fine like you'll be able to you know mix up more of the color and be able to match it again but you know just to save yourself some trouble don't be afraid to really one put out enough paint on your palette here because you'll want to be constantly putting out more paint and also you'll just kind of subconsciously use the less paint if you don't put that much pain out there and you're paying a little suffer from that just gonna do another example here say if I had some trees start the darkest darks of the trees it's a lot of time is like almost black or really dark purple here gonna neutralize that purple is a little bit from there it's gonna head a little more yellow just be kind of like just get a little darker I keep branching this out some people like to premix their colors they look at the colors in the image that they're painting and they'll actually mix out all their colors on their palette beforehand some people like doing that I don't I've tried it I don't just doesn't really work for me that well I might do it in the future as I progress and maybe I'll find it very helpful in the future but as I'm right now I kind of just do it as I go like I getting a better flow that way then kind of pre-mixed seen everything and prejudging and thinking one will be opposed to just kind of just doing the process but you know if you kind of if you get to you know flustered while you're painting that you know a lot of time a lot of people do that pre mixing color when they deplane air paint because time is an issue and a lot of times you're playing air painting that time can kind of mess with you and you move faster than you need to and you don't really pay attention to the colors that you're mixing that well but you can do whatever you feel works best for you right sometimes trees they got like a little more red in certain areas leaves something that branch off here something like that but you see I kind of keep them all clustered and kind of what I'm painting so there you go also the other thing is whether you get a pallet get a big you know as big as you can manage have a good amount of mixing space it's just gonna help you a lot because if you're constantly cleaning your pallet you're losing colors that are in your painting you know it's held like if I'm paying another part of the face like I can use this color to darken another color and just having that color in a different you know in a color that's in another part of the painting will really help bring all the colors together because they're all coming from like the same batch in a way so get like a good-sized palek I got this turtle wood pal it's really big right now it this is really expensive it's you know over a hundred dollars but there's really cheap thick pouch you can get the my best advice is to get a glass palette which you can just get a big piece of glass like fine go to Goodwill buy a picture frame that has a you know the glass overtop of it for eight dollars and just take out the glass I've used like a cabinet to kind of like a like a dresser type drawer thing to have that guy glass cabinet I took that off I used that for a long time you can go to a glass to work in to cut you piece of glass really cheap you clean it off with a razor it's really you know just the best mixing surface it's really cheap and let's make sure you get a really good size palette so you have room to kind of mess around and really play around with the colors and mix enough paint all right I hope you found this video helpful if you did please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel you can also follow me on Instagram see what I'm painting on a daily basis at 4:43 if there's any other topics on oil painting that you want to see a video on things that you struggle with things that nobody else is making videos on things you understand please let me know in the comment section and I will make video on it I'm Christopher NAT arrow here telling you to go get painting

Channel: Paint Coach

Views: 27,614

Rating: 4.9714694 out of 5

Keywords: color mixing, color theory, oil painting, acrylic painting, portrait painting, landscape painting, tutorial, basics, beginners, technique, tips, how to mix colors, how to oil paint, instructions, instructor, art, artist, muddy colors, natural colors

Id: 7WWCUWfekgw

Length: 17min 16sec (1036 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2019