Mixing Colors

Mixing colors on my pallet is not the only place I apply this process, I also mix my paints directly on the canvas, pushing two colors together in order to create a third or even fourth color. I usually pick up a dab of paint from my pallet, make a brush stroke on my canvas, go back to my pallet and pick up another color and mix it in with the previous stroke on my canvas. I will continue to push the paint around till I get what I was looking for. Try to keep in mind not to over mix the colors because then you will lose the color and might wind up with mud or a dull look to your paintings.

I never use the colors straight out of the tube. My colors are always a mixture of two or more colors from a tube. Besides the colors that I use for my pallet that I wrote about in one of my earlier articles, "Talk About A Limited Pallet", I make my own black or at least I should say a dark color that looks black in relation to its surrounding colors. I achieve this dark color by mixing raw umber, hunter green, cerulean blue and red. If I want a grey, I will add white to the dark color that I just made. For a true natural green I mix raw umber, and hunter green. Cadmium yellow is added to the green mix in order to get the different values of green. I also like to add a little blue to the green to show different types of foliage. I try not to use white by itself because white tends to be on the cool side. I will often mix just a little yellow oxide to my titanium white to get a warm white.

Above is a close-up of the red square area on the painting.

I try to use at least three different values of a particular color on an area I am working on, however four or more is even better. These values would be your dark-tones, mid-tones, and high-tones. Anything else between these tones is icing on the cake. I always come back at the end and add highlights here and there where needed.

Not being afraid of making mistakes is always a good attitude to have when painting. Sometimes this is the only way one will learn what works for them. Think to yourself, "My next painting is going to be even better because of what I have learned today in this painting session". Always try to do better the next time around. Remember what worked and what did not and before you know it your paintings will have that professional look to them. Now let's paint!