Acrylic Mixing for the Complete Beginner

1. Welcome!: Hi everybody. Welcome to acrylic color mixing for the complete beginner. My name is Diane. I've been teaching art for about 15 years and I've been making art my entire life and I love it. I hope to inspire you to love it as well. The acrylic is a wonderful medium, it's versatile. You can do lots of things with it, especially if you master the control of mixing and certain techniques and painting in the beginning of your experience. So this class is intended for the complete beginner, someone who never done acrylic support, or someone who's tried it and gotten frustrated, particularly with the color mixing part. The things you're going to learn today are how to mix primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, and complimentary colors, which we will get into all that zones. You're also going to learn how to use the color wheel as a sort of calculator in order to determine how to mix different colors. So at the end of the class today you're going to end up with something that looks about like this. And we will go through all the steps. I'm going to walk you through it step-by-step. Hold your hands. So it's going to be great. You're also going to learn how to manage your palette for efficiency and control. How to use a palette knife. You're going to learn the basics of acrylic is a medium such as it dries quickly and it's very blender bowl and you can create lots of cool opacities and textures with it. You're also going to learn how to get by with a limited number of colors, but we're also going to talk about colors you might want to purchase if you're interested in having more versatility. So grab that cup of tea or whatever inspires you, and let's get ready to paint. 2. Materials: So let's talk about the materials you're going to need for this course. You will want to have a desk, a flat area that you don't mind getting paint on or you can cover it with paper or cloth. If you want to protect it. In a well-lit area, you're going to want to have a board, a dispensable canvas board or an illustration board, or in my case, I just took a piece of cardboard and painted it white with some Gesso. You can do the same with Gesso Primer white paint. That's fine. This is just an exercise, so I'm not interested in keeping this long-term. If you are interested in keeping it long-term, I recommend canvas border illustration board because it will stand up to the elements a little bit better. You will want to print out of the color wheel, which looks just like this. And you'll find that on the course page. I recommend printing it on photo paper because the colors will be more vibrant and keep in mind that all printers are different. So it will not look exactly the same as someone else that may have printed it for the same course. That's fine. Just, you're going to be approximating these colors anyway. So that's great. You're going to want to wear an apron or old clothes. If you happen to get paint on nice clothes that you care about, you want to take a clean cloth Duncan in your water a little bit and just dab at the stain. If it's red on white linen, I think you're out of luck, but sometimes you can get it out if you catch it early enough. So I recommend doing that. You will need a pallet or palette pad. This is just a pad of wax paper like sheets. You combine it an art store. And once you're done mixing for the day, you just rip off the sheet, throw it away and you've got a clean sheet under it. But you can also use a wooden palette, metal palette, glass palette. I've seen a bunch of different kinds. One of the most wonderful, successful artist I ever saw who sold his paintings for tens of thousands of dollars. Just use paper plates to mix on. And that's absolutely fine also. So whatever floats your boat and you'll need a palette knife. I prefer the metal ones because they feel a little more robust and sturdy. You don't need anything super big. This one's about two inches by half an inch. This is perfectly fine, or approximately that size is fine. You will need a bucket or a jar of water for rinsing your brushes, cleaning them, you'll need a soft rag or paper towel for wiping your brushes and your palette knife, you will need a brush. Really only one for this class is necessary. I use a filbert because it's versatile. It's flat from one angle and it's got a round tip and it's great for just kinda getting up to edges and painting in large shapes. But you can also use a round brush if you prefer that it's kinda the same diameter all the way around and it tapers at the tip. You will also need some paint. So for this course, what's required is titanium white crimson or alizarin crimson. Say low blue, green shade or just plain phthalo blue. If, if the shade is not listed. Cadmium yellow, medium, ultramarine blue. Those are the only colors that are really necessary for this course and the brand name does not matter. I have a variety of brands myself. And they worked just fine colors that you can have but aren't absolutely necessary. And actually we won't use them in this course, but are nice to have other acrylic paintings, cadmium red hue. The hue just indicates that it's not a true cadmium. Cadmium are toxic, so you want to really stay away from true Cadmium. So I always buy the hue even though it may be not exactly as perfect as a true cadmium. But in my opinion, your health is much more valuable. We also have cadmium yellow deep hue, cadmium yellow light hue, which are nice to have for mixing versatility. But again, not for this course. They're not necessary for this course. And then burnt umber, which is very, very useful to have no matter what you're doing, it's just so versatile. It helps dull colors you can do under paintings with it. It's great to have. So I recommend that you can also have a blow dryer. If you happen to have a hairdryer, It's nice to have to speed your acrylic drying if you happen to be in a place where you just want it to dry quicker, even though acrylics known for it's drying properties. And then lastly, you'll need some tools to draw your color wheel onto your surface. So you definitely need a pencil. You can have a sharpie if you want to outline it with Sharpie like I did, you will need a ruler to draw straight lines connecting your, you're gonna make tick marks to make sure the circles are in the right place. And then you can have a dinner plate or a protractor to draw a large circle and smaller circular objects that are just around your house, jars or whatever to draw the little circles. Or you can just free hand the whole thing. And that is perfectly fine as well. So that is it for materials. And let's get on to the course. 3. Preparing Color Wheel - Part 1: Okay, so now we are going to prepare our color wheel surface. You should have your piece of illustration board, your canvas, whatever it is, the surface you're going to use. I just took a piece of cardboard and painted some white gesso over it. You can do that too. House paint, kinda whatever you have handy. It's not meant for longevity. This is just an exercise, so I don't care too much about the integrity of the surface. But if you want it to last and Canvas is probably your best bet. So you can use a dinner plate, which is what I'm going to use to make a big circle. Or you can use a protractor. If you don't care if it's a perfect circle, then just draw a big circle. It really doesn't have to be exact. So I'm placing this just about in the center of my 4D, and I'm just going to draw a pencil line all the way around it. There's our color wheel. So we're going to mark like the numbers on a clock, one through 12, starting at 12 on the top and six on the bottom. And again, this is approximate. It does not have to be exact. We're just trying to get relatively accurate placement for our colors. So it's best to start with the most opposite ones because it's easier that way. So we have 12, 3, 6, and 9. And then we're going to divide each section approximately into thirds. Just make a couple little tick marks. You'll see where I'm going with this in a minute. If you want it to be exact, I'll show you a trick. You can use your pencil to measure what you think is a third. So put your pencil tip on one end market with your fingernail. Mark your thumbnail on the pencil there, and then do this and see if you can get three in. And I'm obviously a little big there. So I'm going to go back a little bit. Try again, 1, 2, 3, that is pretty close. So I'm just gonna do that. And if you want to be exact, Go right ahead. So now I've got my marks and I'm going to connect to them. And this is going to help us to place our circles. I'm going to draw this very, very lightly because I want the option to erase. You don't have to erase, but it's nice to be able to if you want later. So I'm just connecting exact opposites. And they should meet approximately in the middle of the circle. But don't worry if they don't. You're just making a big pie. And there we go. 4. Preparing Color Wheel - Part 2: So now we're going to put our largest colors are primary colors at 1248. And I'm going to just use this. It's a oil diffuser. You can use any round object you have. Really doesn't matter that much. And just use it to as a template to draw a circle. It doesn't even have to all the way fit in the larger circle. It can overlap a little bit. It's just a place to put your primary colors. And this is going to be because their primaries were making them the largest circles. Oops. That wasn't quite on task, but that's okay. And then eight, you can also just freehand this. You can freehand all your circles if you want. And then for our secondary colors, I'm going to use the smaller circle in, excuse me, I'm going to use the bottom of bottle. So this one's going to be purple. It's a smaller circle than the primaries. And that's just a metaphor for the fact that primaries are the most important colors in nature and every other color can be made using the primary colors. So we're going to put these on 26 and 10. And then lastly, I'm going to use the small hole in the center of my oil diffuser for my tertiaries. And there's going to be six of these and you can just fill up all of the extra lines, put a small circle on all of the extra lines. So that'll be one small circle between each large and medium one. And if you choose to use a perfectly circular object like I'm using, it ends up looking pretty neat. But again, it's optional. As for circles, the last circles I'm going to have you draw are on the outside. We're going to draw three circles in three corners. It doesn't matter which corners you choose. It doesn't matter what size the circles are, as long as they fit on your surface. And those are going to be for complimentary colors. We'll get into that a little bit later. But the short explanation is that complimentary colors are a mix of opposite colors on the color wheel. And they always make some sort of neutral color, like a gray or brown. 5. Why Mix Colors?: So before we actually get to work today, I just want to throw in a little caveat because I feel like many people are curious. Why learn how to mix colors when you can just go out and buy any color you want? Good question. You absolutely can't go out and buy every color you want. Go right ahead. Nothing stopping you. But if you are interested in kind of learning the nuances of color mixing and how to achieve any color you could ever possibly want. Then it's great to learn how to mix. Also, you may have noticed that paint is expensive. So the fewer paints you have to buy, less money you're spending. But being able to mix his power when you're an artist, it's having the knowledge and versatility right, in your own hands and in your own mind to create anything you could ever want. For example, you buy this awesome little shade of gray, but you don't quite know how to make it more of a warm gray because it's a little bit too cool. Color mixing knowledge is going to help you get there. So with that, let's get to work. 6. Terms for Describing Color: So before we get started with the mixing, I also wanted to just tell you a little bit about a couple of terms we use when we're mixing colors are describing colors. One is value. Value just means how light or dark a color is. So the top scale here is a value scale. We're going from very, very light blue, adding more blue, more blue, more blue until we get to the purest form of the color blue, dark blue. On the bottom we have a saturation scale, which goes from gray to blue. So these two colors are the same. This one we're adding the complement of the color in order to get greyer. The compliment just means the opposite on the color wheel, and we'll talk more about that as you're mixing. For the top one, we're just adding more white to the blue to get to the lightest color. And that may be the more obvious thing you would do. But I just want you to know those two terms, value saturation. All right. 7. Mindset: So I'd just like to talk about what mindset it's great to have for this class is one of open-mindedness and relaxation. This is a color mixing class, so we are going to try to be fairly precise. But don't worry if it's a little off. If you accidentally go down the wrong road, you can kind of just abandoned where you're at and start over. Or you can try to adjust the color you've made, to make the color that you want. I always think of it in terms of doing Google Maps or something where if you take a wrong turn and it'll correct you, but you don't have to worry about where you've been or where you made a wrong turn. All you have to think about is where are you now and where do you want to go? And that's kind of like color mixing. We are going to be mainly working from light to dark. And there's a couple of reasons for that. If you start with your lighter colors and work towards your darker ones, your water gets less dirty, which is nice, but that's really not that big a deal. You can always change your water anytime you want. I encourage you to do so. If it seems like it's cloudy, you're dirty. But when we're painting also, it's just nice because you don't have to wipe all this dark color off your brush and then, and clean it as thoroughly and defense of a light color. You'll also see him, I'll talk about this a little more. As you're mixing, you're going to start with the lighter color generally and add the darker one because the darker one is usually dominant. So if you start with a dark and add the light, you're often fighting the dark to get to the color you want. Whereas if you do the opposite, it's much more effortless. And we will get into all that, but just wanted to give you a heads up and let's get going. 8. Set-Up Palette & Area: So now we're going to just talk about palette setup. I have my palette, my paint set up, water, and my rag, which really is more than you need for right now. For our setting up, we're going to start by just pouring out some yellow and white. Those are the only colors we're going to need to begin. I recommend pouring your colors as you need them because it'll just conserve your paint and paint isn't particularly cheap, so it's nice not to have to throw too much of it away. When you're squeezing from a tube, squeeze from the bottom, it'll pop out the top like that. And you can just squeeze out a small amount about the size of a dime or a quarter. Always kinda wipe the tube flush with the palette before you through the lid back on. That'll preserve the integrity of your the threading of the screw part so that it won't get clogged up with paint over time as much. And now we're going to pour out the white. You do want to squeeze your paints onto your palette along an edge. The reason for this is so that you have as much area as possible for mixing. And have your bucket of water handy, your rag, your brush, and your palette knife. And we will get onto the mixing part. 9. Introduction to Primary Colors: So we're going to start with mixing primary colors. And mixing is a little bit tongue in cheek because you don't really mix primary colors. These are the only three colors that just exist in nature as they are, and you cannot mix them using other colors. That's why they're called primary. Primary meaning strongest or most important. And you can use these to mix just about any other color there is. So they are incredibly powerful and so versatile and useful. When I say mix, I mean, we're going to add a little bit of white to each of the primary straight out of the two because white increases the opacity. And acrylic dries a little bit darker than it looks when it's wet. So white helps you to achieve the actual color you want. You're always kinda shooting for a slightly lighter color than you actually want it to look when it dries. And if anyone's ever painted wall paint in a home, you'll understand what that feels like. So with that said, let's get on to mixing some primary colors. 10. Mixing Yellow: So we're going to begin by holding your rag or your paper towel in your non-dominant hand, because it's just nice to be able to mix and wipe and Nixon White really quickly. Not that this has to be in any sort of hurry, but as you get going into mixing, you'll find that that's just a really nice thing to be able to do. We always want to operate with a clean palette knife, especially when you're beginning in acrylic, because it just makes your mixing more efficient and you waste less pain and less time. As you move on, you'll learn when and how to break the rules. And when you feel like breaking the rules. And I'm a big fan of that. But for right now, let's just try to keep the palette knife really clean. As your mixing palette knife is used for a couple of things. One of them is moving paint around so you scoop it up and put it somewhere else and your palette and the other purposes to mix. So we're going to mix yellow to begin with. And to do that, I'm just going to scoop up some of my yellow. Just start with half of it and place it somewhere in my palette. And to do that, I'm just pressing with the palette knife and wiping. And it's a good idea to try to keep the paint on the tip of the knife as much as possible. Because the further down it gets on your knife, the more it's going to spread out, the more it spreads out, the more it dries and the more space you use up on your palate. So it's nice if you can try to manage it on the tip of your knife. So we press down and you can see the palette knife also bends. It's made to do that so that you can really wipe all the excess color off and then wipe it on your towel and dip into the white. So you may be wondering why we're adding white when this is already a perfectly nice yellow. There's a couple of reasons to add white to acrylic color. One is that white is opaque and most of the other colors are not as opaque as white. So when you're going for an opaque color, which is what we're doing in acrylic, you generally want to add a little bit of white just to increase the opacity. The other reason is most acrylic colors dry darker than they look. So you're shooting for a slightly lighter shade than you actually think you want, so that it drives the shade that you do want if that makes any sense. So to mix, you can kinda come at it side to side. Zoom in a little bit here so you can see better sketch or come out it kind of side to side or up and down. Or you can kinda stir in a circle. But again, try to keep the paint mostly on the tip of the knife. And you can see adding that little bit of white did almost nothing. There are almost the same, it's almost the same color as it came out of the tube. But it does increase the opacity and make it a shade lighter with yellow, yellows already such a light color that you can be a little more liberal with the white and it really won't make much difference. So I like to do that just to make sure the opacity is nice and dense. Mixing with a palette knife can be awkward at first, but you will find whatever feels right for you. And whatever you do, just keep pushing that paint into a tight pile because the further out it spreads, the more it'll dry out on you as you're mixing. So you want to keep it in a small pile is possible to keep it wet and usable. Also, it helps to prevent too much space being used up on your palate. So once you have it all mixed up, you can wipe your palette knife off. And we'll get on to the painting part. 11. Painting Yellow: So before we dip the brush into paint, if you're using a brand new brush, It's probably got gelatin in the bristles to keep it nice and hard and flats because you don't want stray hairs flying all over the place in the art store because it'll fray out the brushes so they come with gelatin and the bristles. The way to get rid of that is just dip it in the water and kinda rub the brush on the bottom of the cup quite a bit and you'll feel the bristles start to soften after a little bit of agitating. And once they're completely soft, you can just kinda scrape the extra water off feel it makes sure there was no remaining gelatin, hard little bits in the bristles. And if there is, just keep rinsing it, rubbing it gently on the bottom of your water cup or bucket until it's completely dissolved in soft. And then it's very important to not have any water on your brush. So you're not going to just touch the paper towel or wipe it off. You're going to pick it up and squeeze those bristles out with your rag or your paper towel. And let me show you. Zoom in a little bit here. If you just touch the paper towel, it'll soak up some of the water but then can you see that water? If I squeeze the bristles, there's still a lot of water in there, so that's why we want to get all the water out. We don't want water in the acrylic paint because it'll thin it out and make it less opaque. So now that I've got my bristles there damp but they're not at all wet. There's no water in there. So now I'm going to get just a little bit of paint on the tip of my brush. Something like that. Like a little blob and just paint it in. You can start anywhere you want. Kinda going around the outside, put your bristles right up next to the edge to keep a hard edge. This is good practice for when you get into a painting. Just kind of turn it around, go around in a circle, keeping the bristles sort of perpendicular to the edge, filling in the middle as you go. And you can turn the board because it's easier to keep that perpendicular position if you do that. And just wiping the paint around. I don't advocate holding the board in mid air when you're painting, but I'm not wanting to put it down because I'll put it directly into my palette. So I'm just doing this so you can see. And then when you got it all nice and filled in, just kinda tilt it, look around if there's any areas that are not even just brush over them. And this is also a great example of the fact that acrylic is not completely opaque, but this is pretty good for a first layer. So in order if you wanted to cover up that, why, for example, you could just do another layer of yellow, another layer of yellow until it was gone. And then when you're done, just rinse your brush off. You never want to leave paint, wet paint sitting in your brush because it will ruin it, it will dry and you won't be able to get it out and it'll get crusty and heart and you've to throw the brush out. Just very unpleasant. So really just agitate the bristles on the bottom of the cup, wipe it off and you're set. Another thing I want to tell you about with brushes is it's a bad idea to leave them sitting in the water because over time they will kind of phrase it tips like split ends in your hair, which is not good for nice fine painting. So it's best to just wipe them off and keep them out of the water. 12. Mixing Red: So now we're gonna move on to red. So you can open up your red tube. Squeeze from the bottom or in my case, mine tap empty so I'm squeezing from the middle, which is where the bottom of the paint is. Screw the top back on. You want to screw it on pretty tightly, I should have mentioned because you don't want it to be a skew or not go on all the way because then you'll never be able to screw it back on all the way because it'll dry like that. So with the red, we're going to actually do an exercise with the red because red is a really good example of opacity. It's a distant, intense color, but it's also incredibly transparent. So in order to combat that, we can actually put a layer of light pink over first and then a layer of red. And I'm going to show you that by painting half my red circle light pink, and the other half just playing with the red. And then I'm going to put the plane right over the light paint too. And you can kinda see the difference between the two sides. So in order to make a light color, I'm actually going to start with white because white is the dominant color. So anytime you're mixing early light color, it's a good idea to start with white and add just a hint of the color you want. So that is going to be our light pink. And then for the red itself, I'm going to grab some red. Something else I forgot to mention with the yellow is you want to always be shooting to mix more colors than you think you need so that you never run out. And I purposely mixed too much yellow because I'm hoping to use it for the orange or maybe the yellow, orange or yellow green are the green. I'll probably have to mix more anyway, but at least I have a little bit leftover. So for the red, it's going to be more affected by the white than the yellow was because it's a darker color. So I'm not going to add as much white to begin with. It'll turn pink or really easily. So I'm just adding a little bit. And that looks pretty good. It's just a barely a shade lighter than the red I squeezed from the tube. So that will be our light pink and are red. 13. Painting Red: And now I'm going to paint in the light pink on 1.5 of the red circle and the red on the other half. And maybe by the time I'm done painting, the red, the pink will have dried but maybe not, we'll have to see. Acrylic does dry very quickly, especially if it happens to be a hotter day where you are painting. But sometimes you can use a blow dryer to help it along if you want it to dry more quickly than you're willing to wait. So I'm going to rinse my brush between colors, wipe it off really well. Grab some red and paint the other half of the circle red. So you can definitely see the R through the pink side, but look at how well you can see it through the red side. It's just, it's almost like stained glass or watercolor because there's just not a lot of white in this red paint. I didn't put much in it. I'm going to turn my board so I can get that sharp edge a little easier. Again, go ahead and keep your board flat on the table. I'm just holding it up in midair so that you can see it better. I'm going to wipe off all the excess lumps so I get a nice even layer. And I can still see that my pink is not dry. So I'm going to pause at this point and I'll come back to you when it is dry. Okay. And now my pink is dry. So I'm going to go ahead and put the red on top. And let's see what the difference is. You could think of it as a primer. If you've ever painted walls in a house, you will have primed them before you put the true color on and it gives it a much more rich, robust coat. So you can see the finished product is that they appear to be about the same color, but the left side covers up that are much better. So that is the effect of putting a lighter layer on first. 14. Mixing & Painting Blue: So now we're gonna move on to blue. We have two blues for this course. We have the fallow blue or phthalo blue and ultramarine. I'm choosing my phthalo blue simply because I prefer it. It's more of a well, it's just my opinion, but I feel like it's more of a true blue and ultramarine. But in reality it's a, it's a, it's a tad on the greenish side. Ultramarine blue is definitely a very purply blue. So I'm going to start with scooping up some of my blue, get a little bit more there because I want to make sure I have plenty white. My palette knife, grab a little bit of white and mix it using the tip of my life trying to keep it in a tight pile. And then I've gotten a shade lighter, so that is good to go. I'm going to wipe off my knife and painted in. And this blue covers are really well, I can't even see that B, after just one stroke. Different brands of paint are different. I don't have an allegiance to one or the other necessarily. They all have given me lots of joy in the past, so I can't really throw my hat in the ring for one being better than the other. But I do enjoy that. This blue, which is Golden brand, I guess. Yeah, golden. Covered that be early. Well, that is nice. Rinse my brush. Squeeze it out and we are done with our primaries. 15. Introduction to Secondary Colors: So now we're going to mix our secondary colors. Secondaries are always made using two primaries. So orange, for example, will be made using yellow and red. Purple will be made using red and blue. Green will be made using yellow and blue. And I will discuss this a little bit further as we're mixing, but you usually want to start with a lighter color and add the darker one. As I mentioned in my introduction earlier, it will just make it easier to mix because you're not fighting a dominant dark color if you start with a lighter one. So let's grab your palette knife and get started. 16. Mixing & Painting Orange: So now we're going to start mixing secondary colors and secondary colors. Orange, green, and purple are a mix of two primaries. So orange is a mix of yellow and red. Green is a mix of yellow and blue. Purple is a mix of yellow, excuse me, red and blue. When you're mixing more than one color together, you usually want to start with a lighter color because it's easier. If you start with a darker color, you end up kind of fighting the darker color. Actually, I'm just going to leave that in a pile, leave my yellow and a pylon. I'm going to add some red to it. And normally I would say draw from the main piles, but in this case it really doesn't matter because there's very little white and either one. But look at the amount of red I'm about to add to the yellow. It's very little compared to how much yellow I have. And that's because red is stronger, so we won't need as much. And I'm erring on the side of caution. I want to see how much this will affect my yellow before I go crazy. And you can see it's turned it pretty light orange like a yellowy orange. So I'm gonna go ahead and add some more red and white before I dip into my pile out a little bit more. And just keep on going in this way until you feel like you've hit an orange That's right between yellow and red. And I'm still going to go a little further with that. Little bit more red. I'm almost there. And both of those colors already had white in them, so there's no reason to add more white. And that looks good. So I'm going to paint that one in. Get a little bit of orange on the tip of my brush. Paint in the orange circle. And I can turn as I go. Try to keep the edges very crisp. Wipe off any lumps, even it out. Or it's the brush. Grab it gently on the bottom and squeeze it out. And now when we wanted to green. 17. Mixing & Painting Green: So I've used my yellow for the orange, so I'm going to make some more yellow. Or actually I'm just going to use some more yellow and add a little bit of the blue that already has some white in it. So I don't really need to add more white unless it turns out that my Greenfield's to dark. And then I'll add more white. But I'm just going to start by putting down my lightest primary, adding my darker one again in a very small amount because it'll have an effect very quickly. And that really did it turn green immediately. It seems to be more of a yellowy green though. So I am going to add some more blue, wipe off my palette knife before dipping into my pure color. A little bit more blue. Going for more of a grass green, then a yellow green or a target? Blue-green, turquoise. I went right in the middle. So I'm going to add a little bit more. Still, a little bit, a little bit on the yellow side for my taste. So I'm going to add a little more blue. And you can certainly use the printout of my color wheel as your guide. But every printer is different so the colors are not going to be the same for everyone. You can also just kind of use your intuition. And that looks good. So now I'm going to paint it in. Best way to get a nice even coat is just make sure you have kind of a nice amount of paint on the tip of your brush. If you ever feel like it's just going on kinda brutally are not covering well, you probably just don't have quite enough paint on your brush. Or if you have too much, you'll have trouble controlling it and keeping it in the space you want to keep it in. But with time and practice, that will become second nature for you. And there's our green, I'm going to rinse the brush and dry and move on to purple. 18. Mixing & Painting Purple: So now I'm going to move on to purple arity have a red mixed up. I've used up most of my blue mixing the green. So I'm just going to use a little bit of the blue from the pure pile out of the tube. And again, just a teeniest little bit because it's so strong. And that is a nice reddish purple. And I'm just really amazing. I use the phthalo blue, which I mentioned before is a slightly greenish one. That is a mistake when I'm trying to mix purple because if you add green to purple, it's going to make a dull color. But I'm glad I did that because I can show you the result. And if you did it too, you can experience the result. And we'll also mixed with the ultramarine blue to see what it could be. So add a little bit more red because it's still seem to their excuse me, I had a little red absentmindedly while I was blathering on about the wrong blue I just used, but now I'm going to add more blue to get it more evenly purple. And you can see it's just getting so dark that it's hard to tell what it really looks like. So I'm going to add a little bit of white so we can lighten it up and kinda assess. By the way, you do not have to follow me down this rabbit hole. If you want to just go to the correct blue, you can do that. Or if you want to experience the mistake, mistakes are very useful. So go ahead and continue. So that's a pretty even purple, but you can see it's pretty dusty looking, it's not very bright. So let's see what happens when we use ultramarine blue, which is the purpley or blue. And since we're mixing a purple, this will be right on the money. You can already see the difference between the two on the palette. Greenish blue, purply blue. So let's start that again with the red. Wipe off the knife. Get a little bit of ultramarine blue and mix them together. And let's see what happens this time. Still need more blue. One thing also about ultramarine is, as I mentioned before, different brands might be different, but in my experience, ultramarine is not as strong a blue as follows. So you do need a little bit more of it to achieve the same effect that you would get with phthalo blue. Phthalo blue. I never know how to pronounce that. I think it's different in different countries. I'm pretty sure in America we call it sailor blue. So again, that's pretty dark. So I'll add some white so we can see the brightness. Yeah, that's a much better purple. Just sort of a money purple. Just look at that jewel tone and love it. Still need more white though, because it'll just dry so dark we won't be able to really see it very well. So adding a little bit of white so I can see it better. And let's just zoom in so you can really see the difference between those two purples. You can kind of see them, see it with the white of the palate showing through the paint the true brightness. And here it's just a little bit more gray. So with that said, let's go ahead and paint in the purple. Zoom back out so you can see. And I'm not turning my board this time because I want you to see sort of the modification I'm making so that you don't have to turn it. I'm just still using the side of my brush instead of the tip. But if you have a brush that's not destroyed from overused and that should be fine also, it's just little awkward to paint that way, but you can really do it however you feel comfortable. And that is our purple. 19. Introduction to Tertiary Colors: So now that you're done with your primaries and your secondaries, we're going to move on to tertiary colors. Tertiaries are always a mix of one primary and one secondary. So yellow, orange, for example, is a mix of yellow and orange or red, purple is a mix of red and purple. So in order to mix these colors, we have to have secondary colors already mixed up. As you'll see, I run out of some colors in this class, you probably will too. So just remixed those secondaries that you need as you need them. And then you'll be good to go to mix your tertiary colors. 20. Mixing & Painting Yellow-Orange & Red-Orange: So now we're gonna move into tertiary colors, which are always a mix of one primary and one secondary. So we're going to start with a red orange and yellow orange. We're going to do them kind of both at the same time because we're using the two to the two same primary colors, yellow and red. So let's start with yellow, orange. It's the lighter of the two and it's just usually nice to paint light to dark because it makes your waterless dirty. But that's really the only reason you can do it the other way if you want. So I'm going to start with a little bit of yellow. I'll just use it all. I'm pretty much out so I'll have to squeeze more when I need it. Wipe it off and I've already mixed orange, so I'm going to use just a little bit orange and again, less of the darker color than the lighter color because the darker color is going to be dominant. I'm just going to mix those together. And what I'm shooting for is a color right between this yellow and this orange. And now that I've got my colors on my primaries and secondaries on the color wheel. You can also get a little bit on one side of your palette knife and hold it up. And that way you can really see the color compared to both, and it's definitely closer to yellow. So I'm going to get a little more orange in there. And now I think I've hit the spot right between the two. So I'm going to wipe off my knife. Paint that in that cute little circle. And there was always white, already white in the orange. That's why I didn't add any white to the color. Making it a little thicker in the middle, I've got more paint on my brush so that I can cover up that y o better. Rinse the brush, squeeze it out really good. And now I'm going to add some red to the remaining orange to make red orange. Let's see what happens. They're way too close to orange still. So I need to squeeze out some more red. Wipe it off flesh on the palette. Screw the top back on all the way. Wipe off my knife, get a little bit more red. Let's see how that looks. Still pretty close to orange. And add a little bit more red. Don't need much more. I don't think we're pretty pretty close to being there. Yep. I think that's it. Kinda of a watermelon in color. I love watermelon. And I'll paint that one in turn members this way. That's just awkward, so I'm going to pick it up and turn it around in the middle to wipe off the excess. And that is our yellow orange and red orange. 21. Mixing & Painting Yellow-Green & Blue-Green: So now we're going to mix yellow, green, and blue-green. The next two tertiaries, I'm out of yellow. So I'm going to squeeze out some more yellow to start. And start with the yellow since it's the lighter color. White, my palette knife. And we're going to start with the yellow greens since it's the lighter ones. So I'm just going to add a teeny bit of green and see what happens. Definitely turn kinda greenish. But it's still too close. See yellow to be in the middle. Certainly try that again. There we go. That is a nice yellow green. So y above my knife, grab my brush, paint it in. And I'm going to do the thing this time we're used the edge of the brush instead of the tip. No rhyme or reason. I just feel like it. And then even and out, rinse the brush, grab my towel, squeeze it out. And now we'll mix blue-green. So I'll just use it the rest of my green, starting with green because it's the lighter color and using the phthalo blue, which is the green or blue, add a little bit of that to the green. By the way, I've been saying, you know, you want to add just a little bit of the dominant color, the stronger color, to a larger amount of a lighter color so that you don't overshoot. But in the event you overshoot, It's not the end of the world. All you would need to do if I added too much blue to this color, for example, is add more yellow to balance it back. Still need a little more blue in this one though. And this one is drying on me, so I don't have as much color, but it's a very small circle, so I don't really need that much. Still too close to green. So let's wipe it off a little bit more. From the exciton. I still feel like I would like a little bit more blue in there. Yeah, there we go. That's more right in the middle. It will paint it in and trying to keep my edges crisp. Rinse off my brush. Squeeze out the extra water. And we're done with yellow, green, and blue-green. 22. Mixing & Painting Red-Purple & Blue Purple: So now we're going to move on to the last two tertiaries, red purple and blue purple. I'm pretty much out of my purple I made before using the ultramarine blue. So I'm going to start again. I'm going to make a nice big pile of purple and then split it in half and make half of it reddish and half of it bluish. So start with the red, use the ultramarine blue, which as we mentioned before, you need more of it than you would need the phthalo blue because ultramarine is not as strong. So I added kind of a big God there, but not as much as I had read. And already I can see it's very reddish. But I'm going to add a little bit of white so that we can see the truer color. And I could just paint this in to the red purple circle. And you can choose to do that, but I'm going to go for the main purple first and then go for red, purple, and blue, purple. And the reason for that is if I have my main purple in, it's easier to see what a half step is between the red, purple, or excuse me, the purple and the red, for example, or the purple and the blue. Nope, still pretty reddish. The rest of my ultramarine. And I'm mixing. You'll see next to the pile I made earlier because I really want to try to match that as closely as I can. And if it's right next to the pile and mixing, it's easy to see what I'm shooting for. Otherwise, I could have mixed right on top of it because it's dry or in there's a different location on the palette. So I can see it's still too dark. So I'm going to add a compared to that ones, I going to add some more white so you can see the truer color. And you can see it's still a little bit on the reddish side. So I'm going to squeeze out some more ultramarine blue. Squeezing from the bottom. White, the top flush with the palette. Screw the cap back all the way. Grab a little bit more and keep on going. Almost there, just a little bit more blue. I think that is the money spot. And I don't even need to hold it up over there because I have my sample written next to me. So now that I have that, I'm going to split a little bit off, wipe it into a different spot on the palette. My brush. And I'm going to add red to have and blue to the other half. Let's see how that compares. That looks like a good in-between place for blue, purple. And this one looks like it needs a little more red, so I have a lot of paint there. I'm going to split it in half again because it makes it easier to mix. If you don't need that much paint, It's great to split a little bit off and continue mixing just a part of your pile of paint because it'll go faster and you won't waste as much red putting it into this giant pile of paint that you don't even need. I mean, add a little bit more white to that one so we can see it better. It got pretty dark. And that is good. To paint them in. Red, purple, and blue, purple. 23. Introduction to Complementary Colors: All right, so now you've done your primaries, your secondaries, and your tertiaries, which we will have painted in on this color wheel already. And now we're going to your compliments which we're going to paint in the three corners that you labeled earlier. And complimentary colors are just made with opposites on the color wheel. We'll get into this a little bit more as we're mixing. But for example, orange and blue are compliments and when you mix them together, they're going to make some form of gray or grayish brown. You can go a little more on the orange side and have a brownish gray. You can go a little more on the bluish side and have a cool blue-gray or you can try to shoot for right in the middle, make a neutral gray. And we'll talk about that as we're going. So grab your palette knife and let's hop to it. 24. Mixing & Painting Blue & Orange Complement: So now we're going to mix complimentary colors. I had mentioned earlier briefly what complimentary colors are, but now we're just going to dive in and I'll talk about them as I go. Also, I have refreshed my water a couple colors ago and I'm sure you probably figured out you could do that, but if for some reason it's, it's very muddy or foggy, you can replace your water at anytime. So we're going to start with blue and orange. They're compliments, anything directly opposite each other as a compliment, even tertiaries are compliments. Yellow, green is the complement of red, purple. But for the purposes of this class, we're just going to stick with primary opposite secondary colors. So we're going to start with orange because it's the lighter color and add blue because it's the more dominant one. And I went ahead and mix more orange, green, and purple. Because you've already seen me do that. You don't need to know how to do it again. But if you run out of any of those, you can just remixed them. So we'll start with orange. And rather than just add blue to the orange pile, I'm going to take some orange and put it somewhere else on my palette so that I still have some orange to draw from. I've also gotten a clean rag. So now I'm going to add the blue. I'm going to use the ultramarine blue because it came out more true gray in the trial I did then the phthalo blue. So I'm going to start by just adding a little bit and mixing it in. And it's wow, kinda turning in sort of a greenish orange. So this is compliments our agree exercise because I always think of it like getting lost when you're driving. If you add a color to another color and you expected result, but you don't get that result. Instead of wondering where you went wrong, it's best to notice what you have now and figure out how to get to where you wanna go. So mine is greenish, a little bit, green is the result of yellow and blue. So what I've just mixed is blue plus orange and orange is yellow and red. So that tells me that my orange originally was a little heavy on the yellow, which means I can add a little bit of red and that will help neutralize it because what I'm going for is a true gray. And that didn't work very well. So I'm going to add a little bit more. And if I keep going and I noticed, oh gee, now I've added too much red. Then I would add the complement of red, which is green. And to me it just looks a little bit orangey brown now. So that tells me I did add a little bit too much red and it's heavy on the yellow. Because brown you can think of as just a darker version of orange. So I'm going to add blue to neutralize it since it's to orange. I'm also going to add a little bit of white because it'll help us to see the true color a little bit better. Yet still pretty brownish. And I want it more gray. So to neutralize brown, which is burnt orange or a darker version of orange route add a little bit more blue. And we just kinda keep going back and forth like this until we hit gray. And it does take some practice and examining really to train your eye because sometimes you get a color and you really don't know how to identify it. So then you can kinda go around the wheel and say, Well, does it look more yellow? Does it look more green? Does it look more orange? What does it look like? And to me it's still just very, it's an orangey color, so I keep adding blue to get it closer to gray. And now we're cooking with gas that is gray. So I'm going to paint it in to the orange blue circle that I drew earlier. I'm going to turn my board for this one is a pretty big circle. So it's just easier to turn it. Bingo. 25. Mixing & Painting Red & Green Complement: So now we are going to mix the red and green together to make a gray out of that. I'm going to take a little bit of green off to the side and white my palette knife get a little bit of red. Mix those together. Now reading green are interesting because May 1 be slightly darker than the other or stronger, but not really. So it doesn't really matter in my book which one you start with. Whereas with blue and orange, blue is definitely the darker color with yellow and purple, purple is definitely the darker color. So I would start with a lighter one, which is more obvious. So we're getting kinda close. It looks like I'm going to add some white. I need to squeeze out a little more white so that I can see the true color better. Because when a color is too dark as we witnessed, it's very difficult to tell what it needs, what it is, and then what it needs to get to where you wanna go. You can also see I'm mixing on a drier area of my old green, which is fine to do and acrylic dries quickly. And it saves palette space. That is pretty close. But I am going to add just a tiny bit of blue because I feel like my green was too heavy on the yellow to begin with. So I'm going to add a little bit of say low, I don't have very much of that lift, so we may have to pour out more, but it is pretty strong. So let's just see what kind of effect this has. No, I need more to get to more of a gray because it just it's a little bit too brown, which It's just like the orange blue compliment I was just mixing. If it's too brown, that means it's too heavy on the yellow and red or the orange element. And I am happy with that. That looks great to me. But you can see it's not exactly the same graze, the orange and blue one. And that is the beauty of mixing different compliments. You, you can often achieve a slightly different result depending on what you're trying to go for. By picking different colors to mix together. Of course, if you tried hard enough, you could mix all three pairs of compliments and achieve the exact same color. It's just all. Mixing is kind of an art form in and of itself. Rinse my brush, squeeze out the water onto yellow, purple. 26. Mixing & Painting Yellow & Purple Complement: So now we're going to start mixing our yellow and purple compliment. And I squeeze out some more yellow because I was out and the purple I just mix the blue purple and the red purple I had mixed from the tertiaries back into the same pile and it made purple again because one was heavy on the blue, one was heavy on the red. So together they make purple. I'm going to start with a lighter color. Get a nice big glob of yellow, put it down here next to the purple wipe and grab just a little bit of purple and mix it in. And yeah, we definitely need more purple. Kinda turning must sturdy, but still very, very yellow. So that tells me I can go a little more liberally with how much purple I'm adding. I can kind of add with confidence that it's not going to change quite as quickly as I thought it was. And that's getting closer, it's becoming more brown, more purple. So my guess because it's turning brown is rather than grayish, is that by the time I get dark enough, I'm going to need to add blue again because it's too heavy on the yellow and red. That's not to say that your original purple was too heavy on the red. But if you're using it to mix a complement, then it's 20. Oh shoot, I just grabbed blue. Well, I kinda jumped ahead there. I intended to grab purple. Got too busy talking, gotten my own way there. But it's definitely brown now, so I am going to add some blue. Let's see the ultramarine blue because that's the one that's more purply. And I'm trying to mix a color from my original purple. Getting a little grayer, definitely agree, or brown anyway. But I need more blue. And now it's getting a little dark, so I'm going to add some white so I can see the true color better. And that is a pretty good neutral gray. So I'm happy with that. And I'm going to paint it in and we'll pick it up, turn it. Got all sorts of paint on my hands at this point is from touching my towel so much. But it washes right off with soap and water. Lovely stuff. And I'll rinse my brush, squeeze out all the water. And you can also just put a little bit of soap in the palm of your hands when you're totally done painting for your day. And just kind of toil the brush in the soap like that until it gets a little shampoo. He noticed the soap is a color like the last call you painted, just rinse it, do it again until it's white or clean. And then rinse it a final time. And you can just sort of reshaped the bristles like pull them out so that they dry flat and nice and even. And then store it in a jar upright like this, or in a felt wrap or something. And he sort of thing you buy it an art store to store your brushes will be fine. But that way they stay nice for a very, very long time. And congratulations my friends, you are done with your color wheel. 27. Congratulations!: Congratulations you did it. You made your acrylic color wheel and more importantly, hopefully you learned a lot on the way you learn how to mix all these different colors and learned how to use the color wheel as a calculator to figure out how to adjust colors so that you can make any color you want as you're moving forward in your artistic journey. That was the main skill you gained today. Other skills we're learning how to use a palette knife, learning how to manage your palette for control and efficiency. Learning how much paint to squeeze out, how much paint to mix for a given area. When you ran out of paint, hopefully you were able to match your color pretty well again. And hopefully you did make some mistakes and learn from them. Go down the wrong road and find a beautiful little path on the other side. I encourage you to keep going with your painting and your artistic exploration. I have other classes and pastel, graphite, charcoal, watercolor, colored pencil, just various other media. And I hope you take classes from other instructors because I feel like the more people you learn from, the more rich and varied your education will be, and the more joyful your journey. So thank you again so much for joining me today and I hope you have a beautiful day.