How to Mix Acrylic Paints

Acrylic paint colors can be made lighter or darker, muted or brighter, simply by following the color wheel and knowing which colors are opposites of each other and which colors can blend to make a new color and which cannot. For example, red and blue make purple, white and black make gray. However, try to combine orange and red together and you get a redder orange shade.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Color wheel
• Paint brushes
• Palette
• Acrylic paint

1. Buy a wooden palette with a thumb hole in it to provide a better grip, or a small plastic one with several mixing cups in it. You will need one of these to have something to mix the paint on. Apply one color to the palette and then a second color next to it. Using your paint brush, mix them together to your liking. If you need to make the color darker, add a small amount of black. If lighter, add a small amount of white. If you need to mute the brightness of the color, add whatever color is directly opposite it on the color wheel.

2. Mix paint directly on the canvas by applying a base color and before it has a chance to dry completely, apply the second color directly on top of it. Blend them together using the brush and a very light touch. This kind of blending is very useful for providing background texture to your painting. It is also less time consuming than using the palette to mix your colors.

3. Load your brush with two colors at the same time, one color on one side of the brush and the other on the opposite side. Apply them to the canvas at the same time. This sort of painting is also useful for applying color texture to the painting, but it is very hard on the brush and can compress the bristles.

4. Mix craft paints with craft paints and professional quality paint with professional quality paint because if the two varieties are mixed together it will result in a weakening of the pigments in the professional grade paint. This can also have a detrimental effect on the amount of fade resistance the paint offers.

5. Mix colors only until you have an interestingly textured appearance on the canvas rather than a complete combining of the two or more colors that you are mixing. This adds interest to the painting and keeps the colors from becoming flat or drab. Dabbing a little unmixed paint onto the mixed paint also helps to create the appearance of texture in a painting.

Tips & Warnings

• Add the darker shade to the lighter one in order to darken the color of the lighter paint rather than the other way around. This method requires less paint as it takes more paint to lighten a dark color than it does to darken a light color.
• If you have paint on your hands, do not rub your eyes as this can introduce paint into your eye and cause considerable pain and damage.