Adding black or white should be done with care, however. If you squeeze the paint tube too hard and put a giant blob of black in the mix then it could overpower your colors.
What color does blue and purple make when mixed?
Blue and purple are two rich and evocative colors that are common in many elements of art and design.
They may not technically be complementary colors in terms of the color wheel, but they go well together!
You may be wondering what color does blue and purple make when mixed, though. That’s what we will be exploring in this guide, so anyone asking this question is in the right place!
This guide will show you how you can mix these colors together as well as the different variations you can land up with when you mix them together.
Get ready to see what is possible with these colors!
How you can mix blue and purple?
So how can you mix blue and purple? That is the question we should look at first before we examine some ways that you could mix these colors together.
On the color wheel, blue and purple are neighbors and both are considered cool colors. This means that many shades of these colors would work well either used together or when mixed.
We will go over some of the specific colors you could use if you want to mix them together. By now, you may again be wondering what color blue and purple will give you when mixed.
Because the colors are so similar, depending on the shades you will get a bluish-purple or a purple-blue. How you actually go about mixing the colors will depend on your medium.
It is a good idea to practice the act of color mixing before you worry too much about the actual colors you will mix. There are tons of mediums you may be using, but the methods are more or less the same.
For this guide, we will be focusing mainly on paint mediums. Even with this classification, there can be a lot of differences between mediums like watercolor, oils, and acrylic paints.
There is a lot of experimentation needed if you’re trying to mix a specific color for a picture. We will be showing you different examples to help eliminate some of the guesswork.
For now, try to mix different colors of your paint to see what happens. Some artists like to use different kinds of paint on a single picture to create a mixed media piece.
This can be great, but if you’re mixing paint colors then you should stick to one medium. If you were to mix one blue color of oil paint with purple acrylic then you are not going to have much success!
Now we will look at whether the colors of blue and purple are a good combination to use with one another.
Are blue and purple a good combination to mix together?
We mentioned in the previous step that blue and purple are both cool colors that are neighbors on the color wheel. On the color wheel, blue is one of the three primary colors, whereas purple is a secondary color.
Purple is created by mixing blue and red together, whereas blue is a base color. This means that these colors create a soft and pleasing look when used with each other.
Most shades of these colors should at the very least look decent together, but some can look great.
In design, you will usually find that cool colors like blue and purple are used in situations that are meant to elicit a calming effect.
Bright colors like yellow and red are really eye-catching and bold, whereas these colors calm us down.
If you’re creating a picture that uses lots of blues and purples, you will likely have an image that will be relaxing to look at.
When you mix these colors together, the effect is enhanced even further. The colors you will end up with when mixing these colors will vary greatly depending on the shades that you use.
We will be showing you specific color codes that you can use to create colors in the next step. But you can see the results yourself if you find a blue object and a purple one in your house.
Put them together and we bet that they will go together nicely! If you have some paints to play around with, you can see this as well.
Try out a few combinations of blue and purple painted close to one another on a practice surface. Then you can also see how they go well together when mixed.
Trying out different combinations and seeing what happens is the best way to learn!
What Colour Mix Makes Blue?
Let’s check out how to create blue colour easily:
- First, fill a palette with equal proportions of cyan and magenta paint. These two colours can be combined from their primary colors, red and blue for magenta, and blue and green for cyan.
- Mix the two colours together with a palette knife or paintbrush. Make sure the two colours are evenly blended together by slowly mixing them together. You’ll notice a change as you mix, and the result will show a stunning blue colour.
- Increase the amount of magenta for a deeper blue and the amount of cyan for a lighter blue.
By experimenting with the ratios of cyan to magenta, you can customise the colour to your preference. You can mix Blue with Crimson to get a warm blue colour. I hope you got an idea of what two colors make blue.
How To Make Beige Color?
How To Make Green Colour By Mixing Two Colours?
How To Make Lavender Color?
How To Make Violet Colour By Mixing Two Colours?
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The Long Answer to Mixing Brown
The complete answer to mixing brown is complex and touches on several color theory concepts. Before diving into the rabbit hole that is color theory, let’s review a few terms…
VOCABULARY
- Primary colors are colors that can’t be mixed from any other colors. They are the reds, yellows, and blues.
- Secondary colors are the colors made by mixing pairs of primary hues. Oranges, greens, and purples are the secondary colors.
- Red and yellow make orange.
- Yellow and blue make green.
- Blue and red make purple.
- Complementary colors are pairs of colors across from each other on the colors wheel. Just as black and white are opposite values, complementary pairs are opposite colors. Side by side, complementary colors help each other to stand out and appear more intense. Conversely, when mixed, they are like positive and negative numbers, canceling each other out. They reduce the brightness (intensity) of one another. So, besides combining to make brown, complementary colors help the artist control intensity.
A variety of browns are made by mixing the different complementary pairs together. So, what are the complementary pairs:
- Blue and orange are the colors of the sky (blue sky and orange sunsets).
- Yellow are purple are the colors of royalty (kings wear gold crowns and purple robes).
- Red and green are the color of roses, strawberries, holly, tomatoes and yes, Christmas.
It is worth noting that the intermediate colors (also called tertiary) form three additional complementary pairs: red-orange/blue-green, yellow-orange/blue-violet and yellow-green/red-violet.
Think of brown as mixture of primaries and/or a combination of complements – two sides of the same coin. Since a secondary color is a combination of two primaries, and the complement to any secondary color is the primary color not used to make that secondary, then combining complementary colors is the same as mixing a third primary into the first two primaries.
The image below illustrates what happens when the three main complementary pairs are mixed together.
Notice that the complementary pairs above do not make the same brown. This is because the green, orange, and purple were not mixed from the same set of primaries.
See also: Color Theory
Using Warm and Cool Primary Colors
The palette below shows a set of primary colors only. Note that there are two reds and two blues – a warmer and cooler version of each hue.
A cool red mixed with a warm blue make a brilliant purple. Here, Alizarin Crimson is the cooler red while Ultramarine Blue is the warmer blue. Color temperature is relative. Though blue is a cool color, within the family of blue hues, there are warm and cool variances.
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Using both warm and cool primary colors allows the artist to mix the broadest variety of colors, including neutrals like brown and gray.
Below are the pigment combinations used to create the secondary colors above.
Color Theory Bonus Knowledge
Brown and gray are close cousins. Just as brown can be thought of as the three primaries mixed together, so too, can gray. The color pencil illustration below demonstrates how a greater amount of blue in the mixture results in grey while a more equal combination of primaries makes brown.
In a perfect world, all tubes of paint would have the same, predictable mixing power and equal amounts of primary colors. When mixed, these colors would always make brown.
Unfortunately, the color mixing world is not perfect.
Depending on the grade of paint, some pigments may overpower others, requiring an adjustment to the approximate ratio used when mixing brown. This is common for “student” grade paints.
Optical Color Mixtures
Some media is less forgiving than others. Watercolor comes to mind. Many watercolor artists mix color in their paintings instead of on their palettes. This type of mixture is called an optical mixture. To do so, one must know what ratio of colors to use when optically mixing neutral. The stakes are higher.
If an oil painter makes a mistake with a physical mixture of paint, then the paint is wasted. If a watercolor artist makes a mistake with an optical mixture of paint, then the artwork itself is a failure.
The watercolor illustration below is a great visual aid for understanding how these colors “add up” to brown. Can you see the small triangles of secondary colors around the brown hexagon in the center?
Conclusion
I have never heard anyone say, “My favorite color is brown”. But neutral colors like brown are clearly important. Much of the world is muted in color with only punctuations of intensity. Remember to use complementary relationships for better neutrals. Now get out there and paint the world brown!
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