It not only depends on the subject you’re creating or pairing, but also depends on your own personal taste.
What colors mix to form red
Using the colors you have, it’s not easy but it can be done. There is no one right way to attack this mixing challenge, as long as you get the right final color. My approach would be: Mix an orange-red color from yellow + magenta. Then grey it down with its complement (a middle or slightly violet blue you mix from your primary blue + magenta). Then add this blue to your orange-red a little at a time till you get a reddish brown. Then add white to lighten. You’ll rarely get it right on the first try – you need to identify how your color is ‘off’ (the most difficult part of color mixing/matching) and then add a bit of what’s needed to pull it closer towards the target color. Repeat as necessary – it’s a lot of trial & error. Starting with a more traditional red, yellow and blue would be easier, and with an earth red, earth yellow, and black would be easier still.
May 7, 2017 at 12:13 pm #1269174
Default
How would I make this brick color. Using white, primary blue, primary yellow, Magenta gouache? How much of each should I mix?
The best option is to buy a tube of Venetian red (PR101 red iron oxide). 1) It is a waste of money to buy expensive bright pigments to mix the dull colors of cheap pigments. 2) Humans spend a great amount of effort (mining, chemical processing) to extract those relatively rare and polluting elements such as cadmium and cobalt from the Earth and produce bright pigments. All these efforts are wasted if these bright pigments are mixed together to imitate the dull color of red iron oxide, which is abundant in Earth’s crust. 3) Venetian red will give you a more natural red brick color.
May 7, 2017 at 1:05 pm #1269171
Default
3) Venetian red will give you a more natural red brick color.
This. Even if you reach a brick red with a CYM system, it’ll be too grayish (in this case, too greenish or bluish). With a CYMK system (black included), you can darken red with black, and add a slight touch of magenta. But any red iron oxide will be a better, more natural and cheaper match – especially considering bricks are either made with red iron oxide or colored with them anyway.
May 7, 2017 at 4:14 pm #1269176
Default
Start mixing my friend, start mixing. Proportions aren’t real useful in mixing paint with a brush due to a lot of variables. A good amount of red and yellow a touch of blue and some black. As mentioned above, CMY will not give the range, black looks like it will be key here. Each pigment has unique characteristics that determine their usage in watered down, saturated mixing with other colors, tinting etc… A system called Pantone has swatches for printers that show CMYK percentages OR their 13 (or so) ink system to mix their PMS system colors. Here is a link to the Pantone site with a bunch of reds and their mixing components. Printer inks are not Gouache, so you cannot expect the 2 different substances to match exactly. https://www.pantone.com/color-finder?q=%238F0205
May 8, 2017 at 4:09 am #1269173
Default
Your photography is oversaturated to about 100%. You can’t mix this color with Iron oxide, which was used to paint these bricks. To reach such level of saturation you must start with Cadmium Red deep and then correct color value using black paint and white. Finally adjust hue with blue paint or yellow.
When I compared this color with my own painting, it looks closest to Cadmium Red deep 90% + 10% Zinc White. Red Iron oxide was far away with it’s brightness and saturation. Use Cadmium or downsaturate picture to original level. But if original paint is a mixture of Naphthol PR3 and Iron Oxide PR101 it can be close in color to photography.
May 8, 2017 at 12:18 pm #1269175
Default
Your photography is oversaturated to about 100%. You can’t mix this color with Iron oxide, which was used to paint these bricks. Red Iron oxide was far away with it’s brightness and saturation.
Red Iron oxide is bright enough and saturated enough to mix the color of the red bricks in the photo. The following is a side-by-side comparison between Dick Blick’s swatch for Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colors Venetian Red PR101—Red Iron Oxide and the brick photo. Winsor & Newton Venetian Red PR101—Red Iron Oxide: saturation = 227
Brick photo: saturation = 113 Winsor & Newton Venetian Red PR101—Red Iron Oxide is twice as saturated as the bricks in the photo. Normally, bricks contain the following ingredients:
Silica (sand) – 50% to 60% by weight
Alumina (clay) – 20% to 30% by weight
Iron oxide – ≤ 7% by weight Winsor & Newton Venetian Red PR101 probably contains 30% to 60% of red iron oxide, so should be much more saturated than red bricks. http://www.justpaint.org/pigment-volume-concentration-and-its-role-in-color/
May 9, 2017 at 9:06 pm #1269177
Default
In the image posted by SamL, about half of the most colorful reds (in the paint color sample) are outside the gamut of an inexpensive laptop computer screen. That is, the red you see isn’t the red you get. However, just about all of the bricks are in-gamut. Nevertheless, I agree with SamL. Use Venetian Red, which may be called something else (depending on brand of paint). If the paint is too colorful for you, tone it down using a blue-green color. Which one you use depends on what you have. Phthalo Blue (green shade) works for me, but it is not the only choice.
May 10, 2017 at 9:43 am #1269172
Default
In the image posted by SamL, about half of the most colorful reds (in the paint color sample) are outside the gamut of an inexpensive laptop computer screen. That is, the red you see isn’t the red you get. However, just about all of the bricks are in-gamut. Nevertheless, I agree with SamL. Use Venetian Red, which may be called something else (depending on brand of paint). If the paint is too colorful for you, tone it down using a blue-green color. Which one you use depends on what you have. Phthalo Blue (green shade) works for me, but it is not the only choice.
A brick red can be reached with both CMY and CMYK, but it looks awful with CMY. It will be either too dull or too bright, without any in-between. Still, just using a red ochre fixes this problem.
How you can mix red and green?
Mixing red and green may not seem like that complex of a task, but there is a lot more to it than that.
If you just go and find the first red and green shades you have in your paint kit, you will likely end up with a mess!
Instead, you should think about what kinds of colors you need before choosing which colors to mix in.
As we will cover later on in this guide, mixing red and green will, essentially, give you a brown color.
Brown can be used in many different cases, though, and the kind of brown you will need can vary. For instance, you may be painting a tree with dark brown wood.
If you mix the lightest reds and greens you have and mix nothing else in with them, then you will likely have a much lighter brown.
That’s why some thought needs to go into it before you start mixing it all up.
We will definitely cover how you can achieve the colors you want later on in the guide. For now, bear in mind that you will need more than just your reds and greens when mixing.
You will also want to have colors like black, white and even blues and yellows. As with any coloring endeavor, part of the fun is in experimenting!
Be sure to have a spare blank page or surface that you can try out different combinations on before you start the final painting.
This could be anything from a spare piece of canvas, paper or even an old piece of wood. Try to make sure the color of the surface is relatively neutral so that the color experimentation won’t be affected.
Also, keep in mind that the tones of the colors will vary depending on how wet or dry the paint is.
It may seem like a lot to keep in mind, but now we will delve into some of the ways you can mix these colors along with various techniques you can use.
Are red and green a good combination to mix together?
The question of whether red and green are a good combination to mix together isn’t an easy answer.
The short answer would be that yes, they are a great combination depending on the result you need.
We touched on the fact that red and green mixed together will give you brown, but brown is not an all-encompassing shade.
If you keep the reds and greens in their own forms and contrast them, then that can also give you interesting results.
If you look at a color wheel, you will note that red and green are opposites. Red and green is also one of the most intense color contrasts to the human eye.
The creator of popular horror character Freddy Krueger even chose red and green for the iconic sweater he wears as he felt that would make the character more unsettling.
While that may be the case, with the right shades they can look amazing together. You will see in fashion that sometimes contrasting colors such as these can be used to create an eye-catching look.
So as you have seen, it can depend on the circumstances whether it is a good combination or not. If the color shades aren’t chosen with care, you could end up with an unappealing look.
That is why we recommend experimenting on a spare piece of material so that you will know what the colors will look like before committing to them.
You’re also not limited simply to shades of reds and greens when mixing different colors, either. As we mentioned, many other colors can be used to get the shades closer to what you want.
You can prepare for certain results and anticipate them if you have a basic idea of the kinds of colors you will get.
In the next step, we will look at some of the results you could possibly end up with these colors.
What results you can expect?
So what color does red and green make? That is the question we set out to answer at the start of this process, and once again there is no simple answer.
To begin with, if you were to grab the first red and green you have in your collection and mix them together, you can bet that you will most likely get a shade of brown.
This won’t be news to you if you’ve read through the other points in this guide, but the answer is more complicated than that.
We tend to think of brown as a pretty boring color, but it is a lot more complex than that.
Take chocolates for example. Chocolate lovers will tell you that there isn’t just one chocolatey brown that all candy bars come in.
Some may be light and milky with lighter browns and a milder taste. Others may be so rich in cocoa that the brown of the chocolate bar borders on being pure black.
Looking at your paint set, why not try out a few combinations of light and dark greens and reds. For example, you could try a nice maroon red with a light leaf green.
You will probably end up with a brown that is a bit darker and flatter. If you keep that maroon red and mix in a richer green, the brown will be darker and richer.
Mixing just reds and greens will make it unlikely that you will reach your target color. If it’s too dark, for example, maybe mix in a bit of white.
Try to start out with moderation before adding these kinds of colors, though. You wouldn’t want to just put a big blotch of white and make it way lighter than you intended.
Add small dabs of the extra paint and mix it in to see how it affects the colors. It’s like working out a chemical formula; everything needs to react properly with each other to achieve the result you want.
Once you have a handle on the ways you can mix the colors, what can you use your creations for? Let’s cover some of the best uses in the next step of the guide.
