by Nolan Clark

Colour mixing is often regarded as a science only understood by the masters. This need not be the case. Colour mixing follows a few basic rules. Rules which once you have used them a few times become second nature.

Before we actually start mixing colours, we have to realise one very important fact. When you buy your tubes of paint, they are highly concentrated and can seldom be used as is. The reason for this is that the only way to intensify a colour is to add more pigment, so the manufacturer sells you the intense colour and it is up to you to correct it to the desired colour.

Let's get going then. If we wanted to paint something as simple as a blue block, and make it look three dimensional, we can see from the picture below that we need three different colours.


All these colours are blue, but they are different shades of blue, we call them hues of blue. Side A is the actual colour of the block, we call it the base colour. From this base colour we can mix the colours for sides B and C.

Side B is lighter as the sun is shining directly onto it. Side C is darker as it is in shadow.

Start by painting in side A :


Let's mix the colour for the highlight (side B).

Rule 1 : Add white to your base colour to get an objects highlight colour.

The more white you add, the brighter the light shining on the object. So far this rule hold true, but the colour tends to look dead, especially when you are mixing the highlight of red. With red the colour goes pink and I have never seen a pink tomato when the light is shining on it. What do we do to keep our colours alive then?

We add the next colour up on the colour wheel moving towards yellow.


In the picture below you can see what happens to the red (middle) when you just add white (right) and when you add the next colour up (orange) plus white to get the highlight colour (left). The left hand colour is way more alive isn't it.


In our example adding green to blue plus white gives us a more alive highlight for our block. Let's update rule 1 :

Rule 1 : Add the next colour up towards yellow plus white to get the objects highlight colour.

What happens when we want to get the highlight colour of purple? If we take a look at the colour wheel we see that purple is opposite yellow, so do we add blue or red plus white to get the highlight colour? You can go either way. Most times your purple will tend either to the maroon or violet side. This will tell you which of the two to add.

If we want the highlight of yellow, we only add white.

Let's paint in the highlight and see what the block looks like


Now that we have our highlight painted on the block, we need to paint in the shadow side (side C).

To obtain the shadow colour we use Rule 2 :

Rule 2 : Add the complimentary colour to your base colour to get the objects shadow colour.

What does this mean?

To obtain the shadow colour for our blue block, we add the opposite (complimentary) colour on the colour wheel to the base colour (side A).

When you look at the colour wheel you will see that orange is opposite blue. Great, let's add some and see what happens.


Oh dear, brown is definitely not the colour we were looking for was it? What went wrong?

We added WAY too much orange. When mixing your shadow colour, ALWAYS start with the smallest dab of the complimentary colour and see what effect it has on the base colour. Then you can start to judge how much of the complimentary to add. Remember you can always add more paint, but you can't take any out.

As we add more of the complimentary colour, we are darkening the shadows i.e. reducing the amount of light falling on the object. If we keep on adding the complimentary colour however, it starts to overpower the base colour. When this happens you have effectively reversed the colours i.e. the original base colour is now the complimentary and the original complimentary has now become the base colour.
This is what happened to our mix in the picture above.

Let's just add a little orange to the blue at a time until it's dark enough, then we can paint it in to complete our block.


Looks good doesn't it! Now let's add a shadow to the block otherwise it may float away, then we will have to start the lesson all over again :-O

Rule 3 : The shadow of an object is always the colour of the surface the object is standing on.

You will be amazed at how many times artists get this wrong. If you have a red ball standing on a grey table, then the shadow of the ball on the table is dark grey and not dark red. This may sound obvious, but I have seen this mistake made too many times, so remember Rule 3.

Here is the end result :


What do we do if we want the block to appear farther away?

Here we are going to put the lesson on perspective into practice, so if you decided to bunk that class, now is the time to sneak back in before the teacher notices ;-) Click your browsers back button to get to the lesson on perspective.

For those of us who were model students, let's carry on...

To make the block appear farther away, we first apply linear perspective and draw the block smaller :


Next we have to mix the colours for the three sides. We know that atmospheric and colour perspective make the object appear faded and less detailed when they recede into the distance.

Our block doesn't have any detail, so we only need to worry about fading the colours, we say the colours are receding. How do we do this realistically?

Rule 4 : To recede a colour add the complimentary colour to it plus white.

In our block example, we will add orange plus white to the colour mixes for ALL three sides. Do the same for the shadow of the block. Let's paint this in and do it again for another, farther, block and see what it looks like :


Not bad eh?

Let's quickly recap the four rules for colour mixing :

Rule 1 : Add the next colour up towards yellow plus white to your base colour to get the object's highlight colour.

Rule 2 : Add the complimentary colour to your base colour to get the object's shadow colour.

Rule 3 : The shadow that an object throws on a surface is the colour of the surface the object is standing on.

Rule 4 : To recede a colour add the complimentary colour plus white to it.

So in a nutshell you only have to learn four easy rules to mix your colours realistically, you can do that!

If you would like to learn how to mix a few of the common colours on the market like Cerulean Blue and Yellow Ochre, check out the Hints and Tips section of the site and look for the Colour Mixing heading.


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