Overcome Your Color Mixing Overwhelm

Learning to color mix is a big part of learning to be a painter. But with all those tubes of paints, it can feel overwhelming to know what to mix and how.

Ep.73 guest Amy Brnger says the solution comes down to six colors plus white.

It’s called a double primary palette ((also sometimes called a split primary palette) and it’s made up of a warm and cool of each of your primary colors.

Two reds. Two yellows. Two blues. Plus white.

The idea is that you’ll mix all of your secondaries (orange, green, purple) and terciaries (red orange, blue green, etc).

What’s great about this palette is that it’s still a simplified palette. You can focus your color mixing abilities without getting overwhelmed, but you can still mix 99.99% of the colors you’ll want to.

Put it to Practice:

To create a double primary palette, first, move your secondaries aside. You won’t need them for awhile. You’ll be mixing all the secondaries yourself.

Find your reds, yellows and blues.

Your first task is to figure out which colors are warmer and cooler within a color family.

Second, you’ll need to decide which you’ll use.

To find the warm vs cool, first try looking at your colors. Lay out all your reds and see if you can divide colors into warmer or cooler.

Remember, it’s all relative so some warm reds will be warmer than others.

If you run into trouble and can’t quite tell, just Google it. Maybe even label the bottle or tube once you know. A small W for warm or a small C for cool.

Once you know what’s a warm red and what’s a cool red, just pick one of each. Don’t spend too much time thinking about this. No color is the perfect color. You’ll still need to practice mixing it.

Once you have a warm and cool of each of your primaries you’ll have your split primary palette ready to use.

Bonus: When you lay out your palette, just remember to lay colors out in the same spot every time. This will help your muscle memory and speed up your color mixing ability.