Possible Blues; Any Blue
Colour Mixing Tutorials
There is no question that Colour Mixing can be confusing and that there is a lot of misinformation surrounding it. This means that when you try mixing colours they may not turn out as you wanted and so you lose confidence.
On this page I would like to give you two little basic examples of how to mix colours so that you can start to see how Colour Mixing works.
THESE EXERCISES ARE NOT AN EXACT SCIENCE. Accurate Colour Mixing depends on lots of factors and on proportions of each colour. The examples below are just to give you an idea of the different results that you get depending on which versions of a colour you use to start with. For these practical exercises before you start the course, I have given several different possible colours to use so that you can just use what paints you have and you don’t have to go out and buy any paints. You can do these exercises in watercolour or acrylic or whatever paint you have to hand. The mixing is not precise for this reason. On the course we are obviously much more exact but I want you just to see simple, basic differences.
THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING as the saying goes! So give these two a try.
On the Colour Mixing Tutorials Course we really go into WHY these colours come out as they do. Once you understand colour it will all make sense and you will feel calm and confident to mix any colour you want to.
WHAT COLOURS MAKE GREEN
The question is – what green would you like to make? We can literally make hundreds and hundreds of different greens. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s just see the difference between a bright fresh green and a dull, sludgy green. On the course we are obviously much more specific.
In both cases you are going to mix together a yellow and a blue, but you are going to mix different yellows and different blues.
BRIGHT FRESH GREEN
To mix bright, fresh greens try mixing a light yellow and a little tiny bit of blue.
Possible yellows; Lemon Yellow, Bismuth Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Light (not medium or dark) or Winsor Yellow.
Possible blues; Turquoise, Teal, Cerulean Blue or Cyan blue
What Two Colors Make Purple
As mentioned above if you mix two primary colors together you can create purple because purple is a secondary color.
When you mix Blue and Red together you get Purple!
But, what if you’re looking for a different shade of purple?
Well, I’m glad you asked…
You can create different shades of purple by mixing different shades of red and blue.
See this diagram below as it explains if you mix Warm Red with Blue you get a nice deep purple. Whereas if you mix a lighter shade of blue and warm red you will get a lighter purple.
The color combinations are endless!
As you can see Magenta, and Warm Red are all part of the same color family, and Cyab Blue is another shade of blue. As long as you’re mixing different shades of blue or red you can still get a version of purple.
What Colors Make Purple Paint
Personally, the biggest disappointment is usually when I discover as a grown-up that something that I grew up believing in as a kid is not true. That is how it is for most of us when it comes to mixing colors.
Assuming that we all had a knack for colors as we grew up, we were all taught that mixing blue and red gives us purple, yellow with blue gives us green, and red with yellow gives us orange.
Trying to put that into practice does not get us the results that we have known all our lives to be true. It either gets us some funny shade of the target color, say purple, or something that is not even close to it.
Then we end up believing that blue and red cannot get you purple.
Well, not exactly.
Red and blue DO make purple. The problem lies in the quantity of the two colors that you have used, and mostly, their shade (hue). Being primary colors, red and blue have many shades and failure to pick the right one will produce some very strange purple-ish colors that you won’t be satisfied with.
Some of the shades of red that exist are; cadmium red light, permanent rose, pyrrole, vermillion, scarlet, alizarin crimson, pyrrole crimson, magenta, and thalo red. Those of blue include; permanent blue, turquoise, ultramarine blue, cobalt, Prussian, Antwerp, manganese, etc.
With such an overwhelmingly large number to choose from, it is common to find people not knowing what to pick to get what color.
Why do some people think red and blue fail to make purple?
Let me explain further…
– We all know that yellow is a complementary color for purple and mixing them together will cause a de-saturation of the purple, turning it dull. It is important to check the primary colors that you are using (blue and red for this case) to ensure that they do not contain yellow.
– Most people who fail at this use a typical or standard palette of colors that cannot result in yellow. The colors that are used in making palettes include cadmium red, cadmium yellow medium, ultramarine blue, curelean blue, cobalt, and alizarin crimson, among others. Mixing red and blue from the color palette outlined above does not give you purple. At least not a clean purple. For example, picking cadmium red which has a color bias of yellow, and mixing it with whatever shade of blue (for example ultramarine blue) that you can think of will not give you a clear purple.
For you to get clean purple from your mixture, you need to have a strong red with a strong color bias of blue and not have any elements of yellow. However, there are cases where a red with a color bias of blue with no traces of yellow, mixed with a shade of blue with a color bias of red, does not give you the clean bright purple that you were aiming for. For example, picking alizarin crimson, and ultramarine blue.
Depending on the shade of purple that you want, you can pick from the different blues and reds, avoiding all the standard palettes of colors, and those that have traces of yellow.
Conclusion
Now you can see that there are many ways to combine colors to make purple. You can start with a basic color palette and mix blue and red together to make purple.
Or you can mix multiple colors together to get different shades of purple. Either way, you have to experiment to find what works best for you. This is a nice skill to have that you can apply to mix paint, markers, or even nail polish.
The applications of mixing colors are endless!
We hope you enjoyed this guide on what colors make purple. Be sure to comment below and share what color combinations have worked best for you. Cheers!
What Does Color Bias Have to Do with How to Mix Bright Purple?
As I have mentioned in previous blogs, color bias refers the additional color or hue that every primary tube of color carries. For example, cerulean blue carries a yellow or green hue, ultramarine carries a red, permanent rose carries a blue and cadmium red carries a yellow or orange hue.
Given all of your reds and blues, do you know the color bias of each? Sometimes it isn’t always easy to SEE these biases. By making color charts and comparing your paints on a large sheet of white watercolor or canvas paper, it becomes easier to see subtle hue differences. I describe all of this in my book I Just Want to Paint: Mixing the Colors You Want!
I know, color charts can seem laborious, but they provide wonderful insights that will enhance your color mixing confidence. You won’t regret spending the time making and studying these charts.
Why do you need to intimately know your color biases? Because of the impact complementary colors have on mixing. We all know these pairs — red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple. When these are mixed in their respective pairs, the result is a muddy or gray color. You never get a bright or intense mixture when they are mixed, though they do result in lovely desaturated colors. (Again, visit my book page to learn more.)
Hence, if your goal is the mix a bright purple, what color do you want to avoid in your red and blue tubes of paint? Yellow! Correct. Therefore, a bright purple can only be obtained if you use your blue-red with your red-blue. The more extreme each of these are the brighter the purple. In other words, use your bluest red and reddest blue.
This leads to the problem with alizarin crimson. As many of you know, I have never cared for this color despite it being extremely popular. I wrote about it in this blog post. Why don’t I like it? Because it is dull. It is slightly neutralized when it comes out of the tube. Sure you can get a likeable purple with it, but it is not bright. Besides, it is easy to mix the hue of alizarin crimson. (I cringe every time I hear instructors tell beginners to have it in the paint box.)
If you paint a blue-red, orange-red red-blue and green-blue on the traditional color wheel, as seen below, you can see the color bias of each. I have labeled them accordingly.
Next, you can see the result of mixing blue-red (#5) with red-blue (#4), as well as the result of mixing orange-red (#6) with green-blue (#3). This shows you how to mix bright purple along with a dull purple. Both are viable, yet they are applied to our paintings for different reasons and effects.
It doesn’t matter what the name is of each of these tubes. The critical principle is to SEE and understand is the color bias of each. By introducing complementary colors into the mixture, RED + BLUE do not always = PURPLE.
I encourage you to create a color chart trying out all of your red and blue combinations. You will most likely be surprised by what you discover.
What about tubes of purple? I am not a fan because I prefer to mix my secondary colors and it makes for a much simpler palette. It’s personal choice.
If you enjoyed this article, please share it with others. Your comments are always welcome!
Gratefully and colorfully yours,
PS Some of you probably noticed that I never referred to my reds or blues as warm or cool. When mixing colors, this concept is misleading and confusing. Painting – mixing colors – becomes so much easier when you refer to the color by its color bias versus its temperature. The latter is important to understand in other painting scenarios.
