Colors help to capture moods and emotions in painting. When looking at brown, there are various levels of depth that you can achieve. Warm colors include tones like yellow, red, and orange. If you add some of these colors to brown, it will provide a greater level of warmth and depth. These tones are often used for sunny, natural, and bright scenes.
How to Make Brown Paint – A Guide on Mixing Brown Tones
Brown is one of the most important colors to be able to mix properly. When painting, different brown tones are needed for things like wood and trees, hair, skin tones, animals, and for creating light effects and transitions in paintings. To really bring your artwork to life, knowing how to make brown paint is essential. Unfortunately, knowing how to make brown paint is a bit more complex than most colors. We will explore what colors make brown paint, and how to get various shades of this versatile color.
Table of Contents
- 1 Understanding the Brown Color Palette
- 2 What Colors Make Brown?
- 2.1 Primary Colors
- 2.2 Secondary Colors
- 2.3 Complementary Colors
- 9.1 How Can I Make Brown Paint?
- 9.2 What is a Complementary Color?
- 9.3 Is Brown a Warm or Cool Color?
- 9.4 Can a Caramel Brown Become Dark Brown?
- 9.5 Can You Turn Grey Into Brown?
- 9.6 How Can You Make a Light Tan Color?
- 9.7 What Colors Make Brown or Beige?
Understanding the Brown Color Palette
Brown is a vast term to describe a color with many different nuances. A brown eye can be completely different from a piece of light brown wood. There are all kinds of different intensities and shades to brown, so understanding the complete brown color palette is important. Browns can be light like beige, dark, cool, warm, and tinted with other shades – such as yellow or orange.
When looking at any color, there are three essential aspects to really understanding the makeup of that color. These are:
- Hue: The dominant color group or main color. For example, red, blue, and yellow are primary hues.
- Intensity/Saturation: This describes how bright and vibrant the color is, or whether it is dull.
- Color Value: How light or dark a certain color is. For example, you get light brown, dark brown, and many shades in-between. These shades refer to the color value.
For altering the color value, you can lighten or darken the shade using white or black paint. For changing the intensity of the color, the color can be mixed with its complementary color. Therefore, knowing how to make brown and understanding all of these color variables is not that straightforward.
What Colors Make Brown?
Knowing how to make brown colors is a bit more complex than other secondary and tertiary colors. If you ask what two colors make brown, you can find a couple of different answers. You will need to understand the different colors and know which ones can produce which shades of brown. This helps you to realize just how versatile brown can be.
To understand what colors make light brown or dark chocolate brown, take a good look at the color wheel, and notice the relationships between each color. Having a good grasp of this will help you to realize which direction to take when making different brown tones.
Primary Colors
The primary colors are the most important colors to have in any painting set. These are colors that cannot be created by mixing colors, and instead have to be bought as pure colors. There are only three primary colors: Red, yellow, and blue. When mixed together in different quantities, you can make various other colors. So, how can you make brown using only primary colors? Simply mix an equal amount of each to reach a brown shade.
If you do this, but want the brown to be a lighter shade, then you can mix in some white. If you change the ratios of the paints, you will achieve different brown hues and shades. Even f this is very slight, a red-brown and a blue-brown will have very different effects. Additionally, using different shades of primary colors can alter the natural warmth of the brown shade you are creating. For example, cadmium red, ultramarine blue, and cadmium yellow will create a cooler brown than scarlet, royal blue, and lemon yellow.
Secondary Colors
Secondary colors are a result of two primary colors being mixed together. These include purple, green, and orange. To make the secondary colors, you can mix the following:
- Blue + red = purple
- Blue + yellow = green
- Yellow + red = orange
When considering secondary colors, what two colors make brown? Orange and blue can make brown, and red and green can also make brown. The secondary colors can also be used to add variations to the brown shade created by the three primary colors. For example, you can make a brown with underlying purple colors if you use a warm purple and a warmer orange.
Complementary Colors
Complementary colors are the different shades directly opposite each other when looking at the color wheel. These are colors that work well when used alongside each other. When learning how to make brown paint, you can mix together two complementary colors. Doing this allows you to open up an even wider range of brown shades and hues. You can also tweak the brown a bit by adding slightly more and less of each color. When you start to mix brown by using complementary colors, you will realize just how diverse brown can be.
Complementary colors for the primary colors are:
A combination of each pair produces a different shade of brown. The secondary color complementary colors are:
These are all the main colors, but between them, you can find a wide range of different variations and intensities. Whatever color is opposite one on the color wheel, no matter what the intensity, will always be its complementary color.
What Colors Make Brown When Mixed Together?
Hello, and welcome to another color mixing adventure! Today, we will be exploring: What colors make brown when mixed together in paint, ink, or pigments?
First, we will address the basic three colors that yield brown, then learn how to make it with a whole bunch of two-color combinations — some of which are quite surprising! As background, I am a teacher and artist named Lillie who in enraptured by hands-on illustrations and experiments to learn how to make every color of the rainbow — and beyond. (Chartreuse and vermilion, anyone?) Let’s dive right in.
Which Three Colors Make Brown?
Though there are several models of color theory (RGB and CMYK being two), the model we will use in this article is the classic RYB pigment mixing framework — the one you likely learned since childhood — in which the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. These primary colors are the pigments that are the foundation to create all the other colors, and cannot be mixed from others.
In the RYB model, the answer to how to make brown is to mix all three primary colors. In other words, Red + Yellow + Blue = Brown.
As you can see in my painting below, three other colors that combine to form brown are the secondary colors, meaning, Orange + Green + Purple = Brown, because they’re simply remixed configurations of all three primaries, when taken all together. Just be careful, because in certain ratios, all three primary colors together make black!
What TWO Colors Make Brown?
Now that we know the foundational concept that the three primary colors together (red, yellow, and blue) make brown color, we can extrapolate to realize that any color combinations that contain every primary color has the potential to form brown. What do I mean? Let’s break it down.
For example (as demonstrated in my drawing, below), purple and yellow can make brown, because purple is red plus blue, meaning this combination is actually red plus blue plus yellow — all three primaries!
Orange and Red Mixed with Black
As shown above, one of the easiest and most effective ways of creating brown is to mix orange and black. Red and black make brown sometimes, too, but you may need to use a less saturated red so it’s less of a rust color. This black plus orange or red combination is particularly useful in trying to create different shades of skin tones in art prompts about painting people.
Let’s now undertake a deeper exploration of the many different color combinations that can yield brown — from terracotta color to a rich russet. Each blurb in my list below leads to a longer article, in which I’ve compiled many other illustrations to explain each color mix, so feel free to click through to learn even more. It’s a rainbow rabbit-hole!
Mixing Brown with Other Colors
Now that we know how to make brown by combining certain colors, what happens when we mix brown, itself, with various pigments? Check out “Purple and brown make what color?” for a surprising answer, and “Blue and brown make what color?” as well.
