Confidence With Colour: Mixing Paint Colours With Ease

1. Introduction: Hello. One of the big advantages over credits is the gorgeous, vibrant colors you can achieve. But you do need to have an understanding of how to mix and control color before we can really harness the power of color in your artworks. Learning to mix color is an art in itself. And it's something that does take a bit of practice, but it's a lot of fun and is one of the real joys of painting in this class. Confidence with color. I'll share everything you need to know to master color mixing. I've designed for fun class projects to help you explore your paints and develop your eye for color. First, I'll show you how to create your own color wheel, a powerful tool for understanding color theory. Then I'll show you the secret to mixing your own natural colors. Perfect if you want to paint landscapes, wildlife, or portraits. With this knowledge, you'll see how it's possible to create a huge array of colors, even if you only have a small paint set at home. I'll also show you how you can mix challenging colors and avoid muddy mixes by understanding the color, temperature and undertones of your paints. Finally, you'll put all of your new color knowledge into practice with a color matching challenge. My name's Kate. I am a professional painter and I've been running my own art school for adults for a number of years. I absolutely love helping people to discover that in an artist and enjoy all the benefits that painting can bring to their lives. This class is perfect for beginners to painting, but also anybody who struggles with color mixing. I'll be encouraging you to explore with whatever paints you have a tome. You don't need the exact same colors as me to take part. Belting your knowledge of color, we'll set you up for success with your paintings. By the end of this class, you'll have strengthens your knowledge of color and have your own set of resources to help you continue to use color with confidence. I can't wait for you to get started and apply what you learn here to take your paintings to the next level. Have fun. 2. Project 1: The Colour Wheel: Creating a color wheel like this one here is the perfect tool to get you started with color mixing. You'll need your paints in your primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. You can download my color wheel template to fill in or simply draw around something, route like a small plate and divide it into nine sections. Color wheels are a really helpful tool and they're also very relaxing to make. So if you've not created one before, you will really enjoy this class. So we'll start with the three primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. Primary colors can't be created by mixing other colors together, but basically all other colors you can imagine can be mixed from your primaries. You just want to fill in your red, yellow, and blue boxes, which should sit at each a third of your color wheel. I've labeled the template to help you avoid getting lost. Don't worry about being neat as you do this. It really doesn't matter too much. If you color outside of the lines. Make sure you wash your brush well in between your colors to make sure they stay clean. Okay. Once your three primary colors are down, you'll be adding your secondary colors. Secondary colors come from two primaries mixed together. So you'll have orange, green, and purple. You can see as I'm mixing here, that some colors can easily overpower others. Yellow is a much lighter color than red. So if I mix equal amounts of each color, the red would overpower the yellow and create to dock of an orange. To create a medium orange, you'll need to use more yellow than red in your mix. Then I'll add that secondary color of the medium orange, halfway between primary colors of red and yellow on the wheel. Then we'll continue around the whale mixing a medium green from our primaries, yellow and blue. And to finish off the secondary colors will mix a purple with blue and red. Notoriously difficult to mix, and it depends what type of blue and red paint that you have. So don't worry if yours looks a little different to mine. And finally, we've got a tertiary colors. These are basically the colors in-between that lean towards one primary. Yellow, orange by adding more yellow into my mix. And then I'll make a red or orange by adding a greater amount of red into my mix. Well, continue to do this around the wheel, just filling in the gaps for a nice even progression of colors around the wheel. If you put the color down and decide to isn't quite right, you can easily adjust the mix and just go back over the top if you need. Okay? Hello. Okay. We have our color wheel, which is a great baseline for mixing and a really helpful tool for deciding color combinations later on. Key field color wheel somewhere safe, so you can refer back to it when you need to. Yours may look a little different to mine depending on the colors you have in your own paint set. Don't worry about this. I'll be explaining more about the undertones of different colors later on in the course. If you have any questions, as always, just pop a message in the comments and I'll be happy to help in the next class. Oh, show you how to mix more natural and muted colors. 3. Project 2: Mixing Natural Colours: Hello. In this class we're going to expand on what you learned with the color wheel and start mixing. Some were not true and neutral colors, like greens, grays on skin tones. You will have seen from your color wheel that acrylic paints out of the gene are typically very bright and vibrant. This is something I really love about LA, but sometimes you want to create more natural colors. You'll need your set of acrylic paints again, plus some white, any brush you like for mixing your palate, water part and tissue. You can do this just in a sketch book or on some acrylic paint. And you'll want your color wheel handy reference. Have fun and enjoy seeing what different colors you can create. To achieve natural colors, you need to mix opposites on the color wheel together. If I wanted a natural, realistic green for grasses, I could mix in a touch of the opposite color, which is red. And this will help to just dial it down. It's still green, but it's a more natural and muted color compared with the pure green on the color wheel, which is lovely and vibrant, but it's a bit artificial lurking. You can see the difference when I laid them next to each other here. The same thing is true for any color on the wheel. Mixing in a touch of the opposite color will mute it down and create a more natural the version, Here's my blue, just straight from the tube. Nice bright and vibrant. Opposite on the wheel is orange. So if I take a touch of orange into that mix, I'll get a more natural. This more natural version would look much more realistic if I was painting a seascape, for example. Now let's try with yellow. I'll lay down the peel color as it comes straight from the cheap. To create my natural version, I'll need to mix in some purple. I'm going to do this just dot by dot, because purples quite a strong color and I don't want it to overpower the yellow. The result is more of a yellow brown. And you can see the difference that just a touch of that purple has made. I'd like you to keep practicing this, just continuing around the wheel with your different colors to create a set of more natural versions. You can see what a difference those small changes have made to the colors. The more natural mix is going to be much closer to the colors you see in real life than the colors that come just straight from the cheap. Say far, we've just been a tiny touch of the opposite color to create a subtle change. Now we're going to explore different combinations of all our primaries. You might remember from school that has three primary colors together make brown. This is kind of true, but by adjusting how much of each primary color is in the mix, you can get a wonderful range of neutral colors, which I'll path it for things like skin turns a natural landscapes. I started with equal amounts of red, yellow, and blue. But if I add more red, you'll see that I get a completely different type of Brown. If I add more blue, I'll get more of a kind of bluish gray color coming through. Basically, if you combine some kind of blew, some kind of yellow, and some kind of read whatever quantities you will get a neutral color. Mixing in a little bit of white. You can change the color again and create more pastoral versions of those natural colors. This blue gray that I mixed here would be just perfect for painting realistic looking ripples on water, for example. The possibilities are limitless, but it all starts from exploring your colors and building your knowledge of how they interact. So all I want you to do now is just mix as many different colors as you can. Keep on trying out different combinations of your primaries and just see what you can create. Challenge yourself to mix some skin tones, some grays, on some earthy greens and browns. It will take practice to be able to look at the color and know exactly which colors and in what combinations you'd need to combine to achieve it. But this is the best place to start. Just by experimenting and exploring. You'll start to see how even the smallest changes to a mix can impact the color. You can even make notes to remind yourself of what colors you used for each mix so that this page will become a handy reference for future. I hope you enjoyed exploring all of those different colors. It can take a bit of practice, but it's just so satisfying when you're able to recreate that perfect color for yourself. For now, I'd absolutely love to see the results of your experiments. So do share your photographs in the comments and let me know if you have any questions. 4. Understanding Colour Temperature And Undertones: There are some colors which are notoriously difficult to mix, such as purple and turquoise. There's also the common frustration of mixing colors which feel muddy and just aren't as vibrant as you'd like them to be. The good news is that these challenges are easily solved by diving deeper into color and building an understanding of how the different color temperatures will impact your mixes. In a previous class, you created the cutting wheel. And on the surface, the principles of color mixing our simple, in theory, yellow plus blue equals green. It sounds easy, but in practice it can be a lot more complex. This is because every color has an undertone, which makes it lean towards either being a warmer or cooler version of that color. Essentially, every color has a little bit of other colors in it. The undertones can be very subtle, but have a big impact when you're mixing. Here I have three different yellows, three different reds at three different blues to demonstrate. First, let's look at the yellows. I have a primary yellow here, and this is the color I used for my color wheel because it's a good middle ground. It doesn't mean too far towards cool or too far towards warm. My cadmium yellow light, on the other hand, has a much cooler undertone, essentially has a little bit of blue in it. You wouldn't necessarily notice this at first glance, but when you compare it to the other yellows, you can see it feels cooler. My cadmium yellow medium has more of a red undertone, which makes it warmer. Although all three colors are technically yellow, you'd get different results for each of them in your mixes because of those subtle undertones coming through. I'll demonstrate how that all works in the next video. Next, let's look at the blues. I have my primary blue, which again is a good middle ground, not leaning too far in one direction or another. My civilian blue has more of a yellow undertone, which makes it a cool blue. Whereas a Ultramarine Blue has a red undertone, which makes it a warmer color. Don't worry about remembering all of this just yet. It's easier to see it in practice. I wanted to begin by giving you an overview onto the reds. Again, I have my primary red, which is good base. Then I have my cadmium red light. See how that is so much brighter because of the yellow undertone, this makes it a warm red. The cooler red would have more of a blue undertone. An example here is my crimson. So every color sits on a kind of scale between warm and cool, depending on its undertones. Understanding those differences in color, temperature and being able to recognize them will help mixing your colors much easier. It can be tricky to notice these undertones at first, but in time, your eye for color will develop and it will become more intuitive. You'll learn exactly what rads you need to choose to mix that perfect shade of purple. But it does take practice to build up that knowledge to a point where you can choose the right colors instinctively. Luckily, there will be plenty of opportunity to practice in these next few classes. In the next video, I'll demonstrate the effect those undertones have on your color mixing and how you can use it to your advantage when you're mixing some more challenging colors, like turquoise, purples, and oranges. 5. Project 3: Mixing Challenging Colours: For this class, you will need a medium sized brush and your sketchbook or some scrap paper to work on. You'll need plenty of room on your palette and lots of clean water as you go. I'd recommend changing your water regularly to make sure your brushes are cleans really well in between colors. For this class, I'll be demonstrating with a range of different blues, reds and yellows. You might not have such a big range at home, but that's no problem at all. Simply use what you have to build an understanding of the colors that you own. If I'm creating mixes with colors, you don't have. Just use it as an excuse to take a break and said, Hey, watch how those colors interact. You'll learn a lot from seeing it in action. I find fascinating and I hope you enjoy learning more about it in this class. Let's begin with purple. This is a color I always get asked about. You know, from creating your color wheel, that red and blue should equal purple, that it will commonly come out as a muddy brown instead, this is all because of those undertones. Here. I have a cerulean blue and a cadmium red. Both of these colors have a yellow undertone. You might remember from our previous lesson that combining red, blue, and yellow will always result in a kind of muted, natural or multi-color. So the hints of yellow in both of these colors, what is causing that Medea purple. So yes, red plus blue does equal purple. But if there is that tiny lean towards yellow in any of your colors, then that will partial mix in a different direction. I'm going to keep demonstrating this by mixing different combinations of our blues and reds. I'm sticking to the cerulean blue here, which does have that yellow undertone. But I'm switching to a primary red instead, which does. And so we'll see what difference that makes on the mix. You can see already that the color is much more vibrant just by changing that red that we're using. Isn't it crazy how such a small change can make such a big difference? Sticking with the severely and blue now, I'm going to switch and use my crimson for a read. The Crimson has a blue undertone, making it a cooler red than any we've used so far. You can see that the result is almost an indigo, a very deep color because of all that blue in the mix. Each of those mixes we've done so far have had that sneaky yellow undertone coming from the cerulean blue. I'm going to take that out of the equation now by using a primary blue instead. First we'll see how it mixes with the cadmium red. It would be the red which introduces that yellow undertone. Now, let's see how much difference there is from that very first mix I made. The primary blue has made the mixed less doll. But because there's still that strong yellow undertone coming from the red there. Resulting color still isn't really purple. Let's see the difference. When I try it, the primary bread in this mix, we don't have the yellow undertone coming through in either of our colors. So we should get a decent purple. We're getting this nice, rich color coming through. It's a little dark because I think I've overdone it with a blue. But you can see how this color has more vibrancy than a lot of the other combinations so far. Next, I'll try mixing the primary blue with my crimson. Remember that the crimson has a blue cool undertone. Can you see how the resulting mix here does actually feel cooler when you look at it in comparison to the other combinations. Finally, let's try the ultramarine blue. This blue has a red undertone. It's considered to be a wall blue in comparison to the other blues I've used so far. Let's see how this impacts the mix when we mix it with the cadmium red, which has that yellow undertone. Ultra marine blue is quite dark, which combined with the yellow undertones in the red, makes this color almost like a black or a deep gray, more than a purple. Let's try it with our primary red instead. Now you see how we're getting much more vibrancy. The warmer red undertones in the blue, combined with a neutral red, means no yellow sneaking in and it creates a color which is closer to what you'd expect when mixing a purple. We'll try it one more time using the ultramarine blue, this time mixed with the crimson. So here we have a blue with a red undertone combined with a bread with a blue undertone. So there's definitely no pesky yellow sneaking into our mix at this. Here, we do have quite a nice resulting color. But another problem you can encounter with purples is that they can come out too dark. Because both the ultra marine blue and the crimson are dark colors, you get a very deep purple as a result. But if this happens, it can easily lighten your mix with a little white to get a brighter and more vibrant result. So that was a lot of mixing. But you can see here with them all laid out together, the best mixes are those where that yellow undertone is taken out of the equation. You'll get a brighter, cleaner purple by checking those undertones and using a warmer blue like ultra marine with its red undertone, either with a neutral primary red or a red with a blue undertone, like the crimson. Now, let's demonstrate the same principle with mixing greens on turquoise. Turquoise is a very cool color. So to achieve this, we want to mix colors that have cooler undertones. My call is blue, the cerulean blue, which has the yellow undertone. And my call is yellow is my cadmium yellow light will try them together. I'm also going to tweak the quantity of each color in the mix. For a turquoise, you want that to be more blue than yellow. You can see how I'm starting to get a lovely turquoise color here. And I could also just lighten this with some white to create a softer, more pastel version. So that would be my ideal turquoise mix using a cool blue and a cool yellow. No red or warm undertones to muddy up the mix. But let's explore and see what would happen if I'd used different blues and yellows with different temperatures. I'll stick with this cerulean blue, but this time I'll use the primary yellow instead. You can see how it doesn't have the same bluish undertone as the first yellow I used. The result is still a really nice, vibrant color, but it's definitely more on the green side than the original mix. I'll put a spot of white to lighten this one up as well. And you can see the difference that fat, small tweak has made to our results. Now, I'm going to use my cadmium yellow medium, which is a warm yellow with a red undertone. Can you see how that hint of red coming through in the yellow has resulted in a slightly darker mix. I'm still using more blue than yellow at this point. So the result is very subtle, but we'll see how it will become more apparent when I introduced different blues as well. Let's try my primary blue. This is pretty neutral, not leaning towards warm or cool. I'll try it first with a cadmium yellow light, which is my cool yellow. Immediately you can see that this is a really vibrant green that's being produced. The yellow is just lifting the blue, but neither color is working against each other. Let's try it with my primary yellow. So both of these colors of fatty neutral and not leaning too far one way or the other, we should get a pretty perfect medium green as a result. So if you're looking for a nice bright green, you want to use a blue and a yellow which aren't too warm or too cold in temperature. Find those colors which will be a happy medium. Let's try it with the woman yellow now and see what difference it makes. It's not too muddy, which is good because the blue is quite neutral. There's only a very small amount of red coming through from the warmer yellow. So this one's quite similar to the previous mix, but it does actually feel like a warmer green when you compare the two. Now I'm going to switch to my ultramarine blue, which has that warmer red undertone compared to the other blues I've used so far. First, let's try it with the cooler yellow. You can see how it feels, a bit duller and a little less vibrant than all other mixes. Let's try it with the primary yellow. Again, the screen is getting a little bit muddy now. Although it is making a more natural green, which would work well for things like grasses and landscapes. Finally, I'm going to try and mix the muddiest green icon using a combination of my warm ultramarine blue and my warmest yellow. Both of these curves have that red undertone. So more of the red is going to be creeping into the mix. You can see how this is creating a more natural and the color. This color still has its uses. But it does show that if you're after a bright and vibrant green, you should really try to avoid those warmer toned blues and yellows. By now, you should be starting to understand how those very subtle undertones can affect your color mixes. I'm now going to do a page of oranges. This time, see if you can start to predict the resulting color from the colors I've chosen to mix. This will be a great way of building on what you've learned so far and starting to recognize those undertones for yourself. Do you see how this first orange is a little bit muddy. Both the yellow and the red I chose here have cool undertones, which means they're both introducing those little hints of blue into the mix, producing a less vibrant result. I'll stick with the same yellow, but this time I'll use the primary red. When you're mixing a color like orange, you should also be aware of your quantities. Red is a much darker and stronger color than yellow, so you'll need much less of it. Start your mixes with the yellow and just add small dots of red until you get the right balance. As a general rule, it's always a good idea to start to mix with the lightest color first and gradually introduced the darker. You can see how just changing the red has reduced the coolness of the mix here and brightened up that orange. Now, let's try it with my warm S grad. Here, you can clearly see those three levels progressing from a cooler orange at the top down to that warmer color at the bottom. Now let's try the different yellows. I'll start with the primary yellow, which is a nice neutral option, neither too warm or cool. And I'll mix it into each of the three reds. The chromosome is creating this deep, rich, slightly orange. Let's try both our neutral colors now with the primary yellow mixed with a primary red. Nice bright vibrant result. And then the primary yellow with the warmest read or have, which is the cadmium red. The last yellow is my warmest yellow, one, which already has a slight red undertone. The warmth of the yellow does help to counteract the cooler tones of the Crimson. But because that hint of blue is still there from the red, this orange isn't as vibrant as it could be. Let's try it with the primary red. And finally, I'm going to use both warm occurs. Can you see how this is creating a beautifully bright and vibrant orange? Because there's no hint of blue in there to mute and cool the color down. You can see from this class how many different results you can get by making subtle changes. That's why color mixing can be both fascinating and a little bit frustrating. I know there's quite a lot to take in here, but I'd encourage you to approach color mixing in a fun, explorative way. You don't have to understand it all at once. Your knowledge will grow with every mix you create. So take the time to explore and learn about the colors in your own paint set at home. 6. Final Project Introduction: Hello. I hope you've been enjoying learning all about color and that you're starting to gain more confidence with your mixing. This class is going to be lots of fun and it's a really great way to practice and refine those mixing skills. My inspiration for this class comes from my childhood. You probably won't be surprised to hear that I was quite obsessed with color, even as a young girl. I would trail my dad around DIY stores and collect all of those swatch cards with a gorgeous little squares of different colors. And this was how I started painting. I used to spend hours trying to make my own versions of those swatches, mixing and combining different colors. I don't know why that was something I felt compelled to do. It's a bit of a strange child whose hobby, but I know that it's what gave me the solid understanding of color that I have today. And I love that I can use that in my art. So I've prepared a selection of reference photographs here where I've separated out the main colors present in the image to create some swatches for us to work from. Your challenge is to try and match those colors as best you can with your paints. This will massively improve your skills in color recognition and accuracy. I'll be doing a few along with you so you can see my approach. And then I've created some extra images for you to try on your own. I think it's going to be a lot of you may find it helpful to have your color wheel and any other code mixing exercises from recent classes on hand to refer back to your need, your palate and plenty of clean water. Make sure that you do wash your brush thoroughly as you go. So you're keeping it clean between mixes. You can use whatever paint colors you like for this class. You may not have exactly the same colors as me, but that's fine. Just follow along as best you can and try to achieve the closest match you're able with the colors you have. As you practice. Remember that color mixing is quite a subtle art. It's a whole wonderful world of possibilities. This means that you may not get the color right first time, but you will definitely learn something with every color you create. Have fun. 7. Project 4: Colour Matching Challenge: So my first set of colors is this nice set of greens here. Usually I, well take a look at my paints and choose a base color which seems to be the closest match. So I'm going to use this pre-mixed green. It's not exact, but I think it will be a good starting point. The first thing I can see I need to do is lighten it. So I'm mixing in a touch of white. That's looking a bit better. Now, I'm starting with the first square on the sheet. To my eye is more blue than my cover mix. So let's add in a tiny touch of blue and see what that does. Notice that I'm being really cautious, adding the blue just a small amount at a time. Hopefully you've seen by now that the smallest changes can make a difference when it comes to mixing. That's now looking about right. Now. You won't always be able to get it exact. It depends what colors you have to work with. But this exercise is a great one to explore what the colors in your kit can do. See if you have any gaps that might need to be filled. For my next color, the immediate change I need to make is to lighten it quite significantly. So I'm going to add more white into the mix and then I'll check it against the swatch and keep adding until I feel it's a close match. You'll notice that I'm using a palette knife instead of a brush for my mixing. This is simply because it's much easier to wipe and clean between the colors. So my mixes aren't going to muddy up. Mixing your paints with a palette knife could be a really good way of keeping your brushes in better condition as well. The third color here is much lighter again. So I'm going to get a lot more white involved. That actually looks pretty spot-on, which is very satisfying. Now that's looking pretty good. But I would say that the swatch is a little bit duller than the color I've mixed. So what I'm going to do is mute the color by adding a tiny dot of rad. Remember that red is opposite to green on the color wheel. So this tiny switch should just help to balance it out and mute that color a little. Do you see how that small change has made to that color? Feel? That little bit more natural. Now we're on to some nice yellows. Again, I'm going to start by selecting a base color, which I think will be a good foundation. This first color is actually more of a brown. So I'm going to need a bit of blue and red in the mix somewhere. I've chosen a ultra marine blue because it's darker and it already has a bit of a red undertone. I think I'm getting closer, but it's too green amendment. So I know I'm going to need to add more red to bring this color closer to brown. Next, I'm going to add some white because I can see that this mix is too dark at the moment. And often if the value isn't right, it can make it harder to judge the color. Immediately. Adding that white will help me to see what the color needs next. It's getting there, but I think it needs more blue. I'm getting really close and out. So I'm going to add this in very gently, just bit by bit. I don't want to push it too far in the other direction. We are that one was definitely prefer having patients and making those small adjustments is what effect? This second color is much lighter. So let's start by just mixing in lots of white. That now looks about right in terms of value. But the color isn't quite that. More yellow, I think, and a touch more blue to cool it down. This is now starting to look pretty close. I think. It's easy to see that our third color, it needs far more yellow than I've used so far. So I'm starting a new mix with the yellow as a base. But the premixed yellow straight from the tube is a bit too vibrant. So I'm just making the most of the brown I've already mixed and I'm using that to dull the yellow down a little. That's not bad, but it's still a bit too dark. So let's add some more white just to finish this off. That's much better. And I'm really happy with how that one's turned out. Went back to another pale color for this last one again. So I'll just add more white to start me off. Color is almost greenish, I'd say. So I'm going to introduce more of the blue. I think I've may be overdone it with a blue a little here. I'll probably need to add some more of the white and the yellow back into counteract it. There we go. I think that's lacking a bit closer now. Now let's try some blues. Once more. I'm choosing a base, and although many of these blues are pale, I've chosen ultramarine blue here. I chose this because I can see there's a slightly warm tone to the blues here. I'd say they lean more towards purple, then they do towards green. So I've chosen a blue, which I know has that slight red undertone. I'm starting just by lightening the blue with my white. I added too much white to the start here. So I'm just tweaking it until I have a deeper color again. I can see that for this first swatch, they ultramarine is slightly too far towards that purple tone. So I'm going to add in some yellow just to pull it back a notch. I think this is looking better, but it's still too pale. I'm just going to mix it in greater quantities of the colors until it looks about right. That's now lacking much closer to what I wanted. Now this second box is very dog. You might be thinking, why not just use a tube of black? Well, actually you can mix your own blacks by using a combination of colors. And these will often come out much richer than blacks from the tube, which are often quite dull and can be too harsh. Ultra marine blue is a great base for mixing a black because it is such a strong color. All I've done here is to introduce some red. I chose a cadmium red because it has that slight yellow undertone. And that's going to prevent the mics turning to purple. Back to a nice pale blue. Again, for this third box, this one has a brighter, fresh feel to it. It doesn't feel quite as warm as the others. So I'm going to try introducing a brighter yellow into the mix, then S1. And we'll see what happens. I've probably added too much of the yellow. I only really needed the smallest touch. There we go. It's inching back towards the blue now. That's not turned out too badly. But I'm just going to see if I could get any closer by using a different blue as a base. I have a blue in my set, which is a cooler blue and ultramarine. So it doesn't have that red undertake. And I think it would be pretty close to this color just by mixing in a bit of white. That's looking pretty good to me. So it's always worth checking out the paints in your set to see which would be best suited as your base color. For this last box though, I can see that the more purple tone is there. So I'm going back to the ultra marine. I already know actually that ultra marine with just white can create this gorgeous pastel blue. So that might be all that's needed for this one. I know this by instinct, but that's a result of many years of experimenting with color. The more you do, the more you'll build your knowledge. So eventually you won't have to think about it so much at all. Here I have some gorgeous autumn reds. And again, I've looked at my kid and chosen my base color. I'm actually going to begin with the second box along for this one, because it is pretty close to my base color already. I think all that's needed is a doctor of a bright yellow. Notice I'm using a yellow which is cool in tone here. It has a slight lean towards blue, which will help to create more natural result. It just helps to mu to the vibrancy of the color a little. Whereas a warmer yellow might have been a bit too much and created a too strong and orange. This is pretty close now, I'm just adding a touch of white. And I think even with using that cooler yellow, it's still a bit too vibrant. So I'm just going to add a tiny touch, more blue to pair it back. I think this seems to be working nicely. So close. And I think we're finally there. Okay, on to our next color. Then we'll try the orange. I'm just going to use the red and the same cool yellow again for the same reasons as before. The slides, blue, undertone in the yellow here will work to stop the orange becoming too bright and bold. This time, I'm just using more of the yellow than the red. And I think that's looking pretty good as it is. So I don't think I need to add anything else to this mix. I'll just keep it simple. Let's go back to the first books now and try mixing up this lovely pale. The color, the base for this one will just be white. And I'm mixing in a touch of my red mix to get it started. It's two pink at the moment. So I now I'm going to need to add more yellow. Perhaps I should have actually mixed in the orange instead of the red, but we'll carry on. This is starting to look better now. I'm just going to keep adding that yellow until I feel like it's a match. Lastly, we have this brown is almost a cocoa or chocolate color. You know that brown, it needs some combination of red, blue, and yellow. So I'm starting with the red I mixed earlier, which I know already has a small amount of yellow in it. I'm adding my blue to the mix to darken it. I think this looks too bad. It may be needs to be a bit lighter. So I'm going to use some of the paler color down here. I now think it's a bit too pink. So I think I need to try some more of the blue in that. I feel like with this wall and it's a bit of a delicate balance. So I'll just be adding the blue bit by bit. That's starting to look a lot better to me now. And I think I've managed a pretty good match that full this last image, we're going to be mixing this gorgeous, not true, almost misty green. For this, I've chosen a blue with a warm reddish undertone combined with quite a bright yellow. Because to my eye, even though this is a mutated natural green, I can still send those strong yellow tones coming through. You can see that this is far too bright at the moment. Even with the warm ultramarine, it isn't giving us that earthy color. So it's time to introduce a little red and see if we can just take it back to a more natural green. You can see straight away that the red has helped to turn the color down. But it's definitely too pale from all of the white I added earlier. So I need to just go back in with more of each of the colors. I'm still a way off, but I'm getting closer. So I'm on the right track. I just need to and keep tweaking. It is getting close at each time. So I know I'm almost there. This last set of colors is interesting because you might think that to mix a gray, You just need black and white. But that creates a very dull luck in gray. So let's see how you can bring a bit more life to them by using colors instead of black. Here, I started with a base of white and I've mixed in the lightest touches of blue and yellow. An even smaller amount of red is what will give it the gray tone. It's the same colors as mixing a brown just in different proportions. Testing it against my swatch, I can see it needs a little bit more red. And I suspect a little bit more blue as well. But that looks great. I just want to lie to a tiny bit more. Now, even greys can have a color temperature. Do you see how this next gray feels fast? This means I'm likely going to want to add a greater proportion of yellow and red into the mix this time. But I'm going to start just by adding more of each color to dock in it. See how the mix is too blue currently, it doesn't have that slot, a warmer feel to it. Again, I'm just going to keep on making small adjustments until I'm happy getting that, but it still needs a bit more white. I think. This last one is much cooler and more blue in comparison. So let's begin with just adding more blue to the mix. It's maybe a little too yellow at the moment. So I'll adjust this by increasing the proportion of red and blue in the mix. I think we're getting a bit closer. And I think we're pretty much there with this now. So I really hope that you've enjoyed developing your eye for color in this class. This is an exercise you can really practice anywhere. You could try using photographs from magazines or paint swatches from DIY stores. Now it's time to practice on your own. Have fun. 8. Well Done!: Congratulations. I really hope that you enjoyed this class and that you will now feel more empowered when mixing colors for your artworks. Please do share the results of your projects with me in the project gallery, because I'd really love to see how you've got on. And if you have any further questions, do feel free to just add them to the class discussion, and I'll be happy to help. If you enjoyed the class, please do leave a review as this will really help other students to find the class and encourage them to give it a try. Finally, I just want to say another big well-done for taking the class. Remember that the more you practice, the more your eye for color will improve. Happy painting.