How to Create a Color Palette With Acrylic Paint

When you start painting with acrylic paint, you'll notice there's many color and shade choices, making shopping for acrylic paints difficult. When you're starting out with acrylic paints, the best thing to do is start with a simple color palette so you can mix colors. You can always add to it if you need to.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Start with Titanium White. Some experts will also recommend a mixing white for mixing with other colors. This is a personal preference.

2. Choose Mars Black, which is a great opaque black and great for mixing with other colors. Payne's Gray, a basic soft gray, is also a great shade for mixing with other colors.

3. Select Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow and Cadmium Orange. These are great medium colors that mix well. If you're not using a lot of orange, you can mix a great orange shade by putting Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow together.

4. Purchase a versatile brown called Burnt Umber, which creates interesting colors when mixed with the other basic colors listed here.

5. Pick a standard Phatalo Blue and a basic Dark Purple and/or a Light Violet, depending on your work.

6. Decide on a great dark green such as Hooker Green or Phatalo Green, which are great for creating lots of interesting colors

Tips & Warnings

• Add whites to paints to lighten them, and darker colors to darken them.
• Have fun mixing and matching your paint colors; you can create some really original colors by mixing just these basics.
• If you're being minimalist with your paint colors, remember that all these colors can be created from the three primary colors, red, yellow and blue.
• Consider purchasing a stay-wet plastic palette rather than a plain plastic palette to keep your paints from drying out.
• Squeeze only a small amount out of the tube since acrylic paints dry fast.