In this video I'm going to demonstrate a variety
ways to mix brown including how to mix it from primary colors. The easiest way to mix brown is to mix red
with black. I have pyrrole red and carbon black. If you add just a little bit of black it turns
into a dark red but as you add more it turns brown. If you have ever painted a picture of apples
you would notice that the shadow areas are brown. As you add more black it turns to a chocolate
color. You can also make brown by mixing pyrrole
red with ultramarine blue. It makes a chocolate brown very similar to
the one that you can make with the black and the red. You may think that red and blue would make
a purple but you really want to use quinacridone magenta with ultramarine blue to make a vibrant
purple. I think the black makes it more, for one it
makes it darker, but it also turns like a very dark chocolate brown whereas this has
a slight, might have like a slight purple tint to it. But it's definitely not a vibrant purple. Just for comparison sake, this is quinacridone
magenta and I'll show you how much more vibrant it is. I mean, that's a much more vibrant purple. I mean this is brown, this is purple. That's quite different. Brown is actually dark red or dark orange
so you can create brown by mixing orange with black and the color that it creates is similar
to like yellow ochre or yellow oxide. Cadmium orange is fairly opaque so it will
cover over previous areas that you painted. Depending upon how much black you add in here
it does sort of turn slightly greenish. I mean that is kind of like a yellow ochre
or yellow oxide color. So that's a much lighter brown, more orangey,
or warmer brown. Now you can also use ultramarine blue to make
brown from orange in the same way that I did with the pyrrole red. You will notice if you add a lot of ultramarine,
like I am doing here, it does turn greenish but there is a point where, if you have just enough
orange in there, it does make a similar yellow ochre color. If you want to mix brown from the traditional
primary colors you can use cadmium red, cadmium yellow medium, and ultramarine blue. So, I already showed you how to make brown
from the red and the blue which makes a dark chocolate brown. That may be what you're looking for but you could also
lighten it up with the yellow. So there's a wide range of browns you can
mix from primary colors, it just depends on how dark you want it or how light you want
it. So here it is with the yellow I'll add a little
bit more and then I'll add some red. And if you want a dark brown from this you
just leave out more of the yellow and mix the red and the blue together. I'll try and smooth that out a little bit. So here's a nice range of brown you can mix
from the traditional red, yellow, and blue primary colors. Now as an alternative to red, yellow, and
blue, you can also use cyan, magenta, and yellow and here I'm using phthalo blue, quinacridone
magenta, and hansa yellow medium. You can mix a brown from these colors
too. So if you want a dark brown start by mixing
purple with phthalo blue and quinacridone magenta then slowly introduce the hansa yellow
medium. Now this looks too green so I'll add more
magenta and that makes a fairly dark brown. I mean, I want more magenta in here just to
warm it up maybe a little bit more yellow. And these colors are transparent so you can get
transparent browns with this. If you want a warmer brown just add more yellow
and magenta. These colors are very pure but you can mix
some very neutral earth colors from them. So if you want a real light brown, mix a lot
of yellow with a little bit of magenta to make orange and then slowly add phthalo blue
in there. And you can adjust it, add a little bit of
magenta to warm it up a bit. I already made a video about how to mix black
from these colors so look for that in my playlist on color theory and color mixing. I'm just darkening this top part up a little
bit. Another approach to mixing brown is to mix
complementary colors. Now they don't have to be exactly opposite
colors. In this first one I'll mix cad red medium
with light green permanent. Now I start mostly with the red and you add
small amounts of green until it starts to darken it. If you add too much green it starts turning
an unattractive brown color. There's a middle point where it makes a fairly
decent brown. You can think of red and green as being complementary
colors but it's not a mixing complement. A mixing complement when you mix them together
it turns a neutral gray. And when you're trying mix a brown you're
trying to mix a near neutral. So some of these other color combinations,
like you think yellow and purple are opposites and that creates brown but you can also use
cadmium orange, which I'll show you next. So cadmium orange and dioxazine purple. It's a similar approach where it's mostly
orange and then you use the purple to dull it down. This is more of a yellow brown whereas the
cadmium red made a brown that's more reddish. If you add more purple it makes a darker brown. See if I can smooth that out a little bit. So other than orange you can also use yellow
as I mentioned before and mix it with dioxazine purple. It's pretty similar to the cadmium orange
mixed with the purple. You might be able to go a little darker with
this one. Oops, my labels are wrong! That says phthalo blue and cad red. Purple and yellow. Before I showed you how to mix brown from
ultramarine blue and pyrrole red, this is a combination of phthalo blue and cadmium red. It produces a similar result. And as you add more phthalo it gets darker
and darker. Again that does not make purple you would
want to use quinacridone magenta with the Phthalo Blue. I can demonstrate that real quick. So here's quinacridone magenta and I'll just
mix a little phthalo in there. Oops And that makes a vibrant purple. And that's dioxazine right there so if I wanted
that to look a little bit closer I could just add a little bit of magenta in there. So that's a pretty close approximation to
dioxazine purple. Light brown. So the easiest way to make light brown is
to take a tube color like Burnt Sienna and mix it with white. Add a little bit of white to burnt sienna
and it's almost a coffee color but as you add more white it starts look like a flesh
color. That could be useful for using a limited palette
and you're painting portraits. This would make a suitable skin tone. So that's burnt sienna with white. Next up is burnt umber mixed with white and
that's a lot more neutral. So burnt number plus white, it's a lot less
red than the Burnt Sienna. So in addition to mixing like mixing burnt
sienna or burnt number with white you can use any of these other recipes such as the
cadmium orange with ultramarine blue to make light brown. You just mix it up like you normally would and then
add white to it. So depending on what colors you use you're
going to get different shades of brown. Light brown from primary colors. Mix the cad red medium with ultramarine blue
and then add cad yellow medium to make an orangey warm brown. To lighten it just add some white. Now you can change the proportions of the
red to the yellow to make this more yellow, or more orange, or more red. If you had more blue it will neutralize it. I can show you what that looks like, this
is ultramarine blue. So you can see that's a more neutral light
brown. You can add more white to it. Now, you can also do that with the phthalo,
yellow, and quinacridone magenta. I'll mix the magenta with the phthalo blue
and add hansa yellow medium to make brown and then add the titanium white. And the same principle applies you can make
it more reddish by adding more magenta and yellow or you can add more blue to dull it
down. Add more white to make it lighter. Now the reason why brown isn't on the color
wheel is because it only shows the pure colors. It doesn't show the tints which are the colors
mixed with white, and if it showed the colors mixed with black, which are the shades, brown
would be next to the red or the orange. Thanks for watching. Please remember to subscribe and check out
my playlist on color mixing and color theory.
