In this video:

• how to mix vivid colors

• how to mix less vivid colors

Complementary colors are colors that lie opposite of each other at the color wheel. When you put them side by side, they pop of the canvas. When you mix them, you get a dull, greyed down mixture.

You’ve probably heard that blue is cool and red is warm—but in painting, it’s not that black and white 😅. Sometimes it does make sense to think in terms of warm and cool, but most of the times it might be more handy to just look at hue, value and saturation. In this video, we’ll explore warm and cool colors, not just in theory, but right on the palette.

People often think color mixing is difficult. The real problem is usually not the mixing itself. Properly matching the colors being perceived is usually the biggest challenge.

When trying to match a color, we examine three things: color, value and saturation. In this video I'll demonstrate how you can approach matching any color that you encounter. I use acrylics, but the same method can be used with oils and gouache.

Most colors we see are quite muted, while the colors we buy often are very saturated. In this video I show a few ways to mute colors.

If you know how to add or reduce contrast in your paintings, you can purposely direct the viewers attention to certain areas.

Some colors aren't that obvious at first glance. And if you don't know what you see, it may get difficult to mix the color properly. In this video some tips and tricks and a short demo.

You can lighten colors with white, yellow or combination of these two. Yellow works great to lighten orange, red, brown and sometimes green colors. For blue and purple most of the times it's better to only use white, because blue gets green when you add yellow and purple gets brown or grey.

Orange can be made by mixing yellow and red. But as always, there are different oranges, yellows and reds. In this video I'll show some possibilities but of course the main goal is to try to demonstrate the principles of color mixing.

You can make a vivid purple by mixing magenta and cyan (or phthalo blue), or colors that lie in between these two primaries. When you look for a less vivid purple, here are some options

You can make green by mixing yellow and blue, but it matters which yellow and blue you use and there are other options as well! As always, the main goal of this mixing video is to try to understand why certain mixtures are totally different then others. This way we develop a better understanding of color mixing theory.

Brown colors contain red, yellow and a bit of blue. In this video I show you some examples.

Basic knowledge of complementary colors is very helpful when color mixing. Complementary colors are colors that lie opposite of each other on the color wheel. When you put them next to each other, they pop off your canvas. When you mix them, they neutralize each other. So, when you know what they do, you can use it to make high or low contrasts, you can choose to mix saturated or desaturated colors etc.

One of the ways to mix shadow colors is by using complementary colors.

In this video we take a look at black acrylic paint. Are you allowed to use it? Also we'll look at other options, for instance making a dark color with burnt umber and ultramarine.

In this video I'll show you how you can darken yellow. You can try to do it with black, but then chances are that you don't get the desired result.

A lot of apps and programs have an eye dropper tool. With the eye dropper tool you can easily check colors in photos. You can find information on color bias, tonal value and saturation. A great learning tool for artists who want to improve color judgment. In the video I use Adobe Photoshop and Krita, but there are a lot of other programs that you can use.

Using a limited palette has some great benefits: learning to mix colors is easier, it's easier to remember how you got to certain colors and it saves you some money. Here are the colors I used in this video. Please keep in mind: this is only a suggestion to help you get started. There are no rules and everyone has his own preferences. With color mixing there are many ways to get the same results. Always feel free to experiment.